# @vrypan.eth: Farcaster's shift from p2p protocol passion to DAU growth focus

Source: https://farcaster.xyz/vrypan.eth/0xff16e2a9

## Summary

vrypan.eth writes that Farcaster has shifted from the passion for its peer-to-peer protocol that drew him in to a focus on daily active user (DAU) growth. He says he joined in July 2022 and began running his own hub in August 2023, shortly before Farcaster opened signups to everyone in October, when it had previously been invite-only. He questions whether the protocol would feel as exciting to a newcomer today as its September 2023 version did. He says the project's ethos now centers on DAU growth rather than extensibility, data ownership and censorship resistance, and that its roadmap appears to be a list of feature requests ranked by a DAU metric.

## Article

This chart shows the number of casts I’ve posted each month since I first joined, in July 2022.

What happened in August 2023? I started running my own hub, and in October, Farcaster opened signups to everyone (until then, it was invite-only).

That p2p version of the protocol, with all its flaws, is what really got me passionate about Farcaster. I ran my own hub, and it had the same privileges like any other hub. But if I discovered Farcaster today, would it feel as exciting as the 2023.09 version? I’m not so sure.

I was thinking about this while watching this presentation about the “ATProto ethos.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A-0k58TfPo 

We used to have these kinds of discussions here, too. Not so much anymore. The Farcaster ethos has become "DAU growth", there is no passion about extensibility, data ownership, censorship resistance. I don't feel there is any vision about the protocol, how they want it to look in one, two, five years, just a list of feature requests, prioritized according to some DAU metric. 

Yes, I know, "none of these matter if we don't have millions of DAU".

Like I said: "DAU growth".

I also know I'm a niche audience, you can't grow to millions of users like me. Oh, well..