# Ethereum-Based Twitter Rival Farcaster Raises $150 Million - Decrypt

Source: https://decrypt.co/231644/ethereum-based-twitter-rival-farcaster-raises-150-million
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Ethereum-Based-Twitter-Rival-Farcaster-Raises-dollar150-Million-Decrypt?index=0x664ce9a0125089f275c5c1dc328685d5a28be8782ffe4e6fe7f20a2be92c1cb811f68303
Submitted by misha on 2024-05-21 UTC, 6 upvotes, 7 comments

## Summary

Farcaster, a decentralized social media protocol, announced a $150 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm, with participation from a16z crypto, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Variant and Standard Crypto. The company told Unchained Crypto that the raise values it at $1 billion, making it the latest crypto unicorn. Co-founder Dan Romero said the company is focused on growing daily active users and adding developer features such as channels and direct messaging. The network, built on Optimism, an Ethereum layer-2 network, has claimed 350,000 paid sign-ups since its October 2023 permissionless launch.

## Article

Farcaster, the decentralized social media protocol, announced a $150 million Series A funding round on Tuesday, providing a major boost to the fast-growing network's development plans.

The funding round was led by Paradigm, with participation from investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz's a16z crypto fund, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Variant, and Standard Crypto, among others. Farcaster told Unchained Crypto that the raise values the startup at $1 billion, making it the latest crypto unicorn.

In a post Tuesday, Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero outlined the firm’s priorities for the newly raised capital: "We're focused on two things for the rest of the year: Growing daily active users [and] adding developer primitives to the protocol like channels and direct messaging."

The announcement comes on the heels of Farcaster's permissionless launch in October 2023, which opened the protocol to all developers and users. Since then, Farcaster has seen sizable growth, claiming 350,000 paid sign-ups and a 50-fold increase in network activity. The network is built on Optimism, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling network.

Farcaster was founded in 2020 by a pair of Coinbase alums, Romero and Varun Srinivasan. It gained significant traction at the start of 2024 with the launch of Frames, a feature that pulls in functionality—like minting NFTs or playing games—from external apps without making the user leave the social feed.

Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Join 72,000+ readers

Create an account to save your articles.

## Comments

**simplifiedprivacy.eth**: That's awesome! Is there any way to create an account without Google/Apple accounts for payment?  I tried Warpcast but it locks me out

**tim**: This should work, I know that alternative clients allow you to create accounts purely by interacting onchain. Maybe try herocast

**ayomide.eth**: “Twitter Rival” is wild 😀

**simplifiedprivacy.eth**: Herocast is glitched. It stole a tiny amount of money but a lot of my time =(
Do you know hellno.eth?  Or any others to try?

**tim**: I know him and forwarded him this comment. We‘ll get your money back!

**simplifiedprivacy.eth**: Ok thank you.  I found a web client far.quest that sells FIDs also, but it tells me:

"An error has occured
You can only register one FID per address."

But on that client and web3.bio it isn't showing up.  Do you know how to view or transfer fids?

**simplifiedprivacy.eth**: ohhh i see an email from him now.  hahah can't delete the above