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The 20 richest people in crypto. 1. Changpeng Zhao : $114.6B 2. Giancarlo Devasini : $89.3B 3. Paolo Ardoino : $38B 4. Jean-Louis van der Velde : $38B 5. Stuart Hoegner : $24.7B 6. Brian Armstrong : $9.4B 7. Justin Sun : $8.5B 8. Chris Larsen : $8.4B 9. Pavel Durov : $6.6B 10. Michael Novogratz : $5.6B 11. Michael Saylor : $4.8B 12. Jed McCaleb : $3.9B 13. Tyler Winklevoss : $2.9B 14. Cameron Winklevoss : $2.9B 15. Fred Ehrsam : $2.6B 16. Song Chi-hyung : $2.6B 17. Tim Draper : $2.3B 18. Matthew Roszak : $2.26B 19. Vitalik Buterin : $560M 20. Anatoly Yakovenko : $500M to $1.2B Bookmark for Later 📃
One thing people need to realize is that, unfortunately, decentralized social networks haven't worked yet. That's the truth. Farcaster's interactions dropped by 90% after @dwr sold it, down to fewer than 3,000 posts a day. Lens has never really taken off and has been consistently declining, also hovering around a few thousand interactions a day. I really love these innovations and have always been an early adopter of both, but so far, they've failed. There are, unironically, Telegram groups with more engagement than these platforms. So having someone like @balajis spending time and money trying to make the protocol useful and help it grow is really awesome. Web3 people really love to engage in these philosophical debates about decentralization, but if no one uses it, it doesn't matter whether it's decentralized or not. It's just LARPing. Farcaster was dead, and now it's got another shot. If you're enthusiastic about decentralized social networks, take advantage of this moment. Join NS or another client and use the momentum to your advantage.
People who are really serious about (wet) software - culture -, should make their own social network. @balajis just acquired @farcaster_xyz and set an explicit social contract. Only techno-optimists allowed. A few didn't consent and exited to other clients, without losing thei…
Some quick thoughts on people asking how I can support crops and be excited about the changes to @farcaster_xyz Farcaster (the app) has always had moderation and a social contract. @dwr talked about moderation from the beginning. Having rules for an app doesn’t inherently conflict with free speech or censorship resistance We don’t allow shitposting on ethresearch. It’s a space for Ethereum research, and moderation helps keep it useful. That’s reasonable. If the mods started banning research about MEV because they personally didn’t think MEV was a problem, that would be a different story. They’d be using their position to suppress ideas within the discussion the forum is supposed to support I’m directionally for apps experimenting with rules and algorithms that make conversations more productive. We already have algorithms deciding what gets attention, based on what keeps us scrolling. I want people trying other approaches @balajis is changing Farcaster’s social contract and making it explicit. That doesn’t automatically make every rule or moderation decision good. Applying new rules to old posts is a fair thing to criticize. People wrote those posts under different expectations, and signing something today doesn’t erase that But Farcaster being built on an open, decentralized protocol matters here. The app’s moderation rules shouldn’t determine whether you can participate in the underlying network. You should be able to use or build another client with different rules and keep your identity, following, and history. That needs to work in practice, too That’s where my support for CROPS comes in. I want the underlying network to remain open and censorship resistant so different communities can exist on it. I don’t need every app on that network to have the same moderation policy, or to accept every kind of post Personally, I like the direction of the new social contract. I’ve always found the Network State and techno-optimism interesting without agreeing with everything involved. I’m interested in a social app that rewards building, teaching, and disagreeing productively I want to write a full post about this, but I’m starting my travels to India. See you soon @JoinEdgeCity @EFDevcon
Cassie — I find it amusing that you’re upset by our neutrality when you’ve been the biggest beneficiary of it for the past 7 months. I really disliked your approach with the Neynar team. I know you had your own personal beef with them and I feel like some of your actions were motivated by that and didn’t allow for them to even get off the ground. I didn’t care for it. I felt like there was a push to take a side then to. If pushed, Neynar would’ve been our “side.” (and by the way, we were so neutral they thought we were team Cassie while still giving us the opportunity to run CEF and supporting GMFC — we didn’t find that out until the end of CEF.) But I kept all my personal feelings to myself and we continued to share all activity and news about hypersnap. Not sure that will continue (although we did mention your call yesterday). I also find it disingenuous that you never shared the full scope of your proposal with those who were riding so hard for you to take over Farcaster. It was not a real offer. To think that Rish and their investors would pay you to continue the protocol while there were actual cash offers on the table is crazy work. Also — you say Quorum will be there for us while I know there are specific discussions around banning those who voted yes. So which is it? I may not agree with every statement or action that has occurred during the switch to Network School but I’m willing to wait and see. I’m hoping that it may bring back some of the folks from early days who created the environment I fell in love with. It may not. But I’ll allow season 4 to unfold and see how it plays out.
