Fred Wilson: Silicon Valley’s Top Venture Capitalist Shifts Focus to Online Communities, Farcaster Resembles Early Twitter Ecosystem

Fred Wilson: Silicon Valley's Top Venture Capitalist Shifts Focus to Online Communities, Farcaster Resembles Early Twitter Ecosystem

Fred Wilson: Silicon Valley's Top Venture Capitalist Shifts Focus to Online Communities, Farcaster Resembles Early Twitter Ecosystem

Fred Wilson, co-founder of Union Square Ventures (USV), a top venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, announced on Wednesday (22nd) on the X platform that his followers can now follow his account on the decentralized social protocol Farcaster. He is currently using Farcaster to share his thoughts on technology, startups, venture capital, music, and life on the blockchain. Wilson also mentioned that besides being hacked last year, his X account (formerly Twitter) has been inactive for the past 18 months.

Fred Wilson also published a second article about his move from Web2 to Web3, explaining his reasons for transitioning from X to Farcaster. He mentioned that USV invested in Twitter in 2007, and he served on the Twitter board for many years while being an active user on the platform until Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022. Wilson reflected on what he had previously said:

“However, the developments turned out to be exactly the opposite of what Fred Wilson expected, so he left Twitter and started using Farcaster.” Wilson continued, “Although Farcaster is currently relatively small with less than one million total users and approximately 50,000 daily active users, it possesses something that Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok do not.”

Farcaster Secures $150 Million in Funding

While Fred Wilson made the above announcement, the development team behind Farcaster announced the completion of a $150 million new funding round led by renowned venture capital firm Paradigm. Other participating institutions include a16z crypto, Haun Ventures, USV, Variant, and Standard Crypto.

Farcaster stated that this new funding will support their work on Farcaster for many years to come. For the rest of this year, the company will focus on growing its daily active user base and adding developer primitives to the protocol, such as channels and direct messaging.

Farcaster – Characteristics

Fred Wilson pointed out in his latest article that Farcaster has a decentralized and open community graph and protocol, much like early Twitter. Anyone can develop community applications on Farcaster, and they can collaborate with each other. The main client for Farcaster is called Warpcast, developed by the Farcaster team. Wilson explained that if he chose to use Supercast, Nook, Kiosk, or other Farcaster clients, anyone could read and reply to his “casts” (similar to tweets) on any app, and vice versa. He stated, “This is similar to the early days of Twitter with Tweety, Tweetdeck, and many other third-party clients.”

Wilson further explained:

Wilson also pointed out that companies operating social media applications today can deplatform political figures, optimize algorithms for advertising purposes, and be shut down by the US government. Therefore, “we need a different model.” Wilson believes that Farcaster can solve these problems and referred to the protocol as the “Twitter ecosystem around 2007.” Its on-chain business model ensures that it will not be shut down, ever.

Wilson concluded:

Related article: “400% Surge in Daily Active Users! How to Make the Most of Farcaster’s Cryptocurrency Alpha Social App Warpcast?”