Farcaster's monthly revenue is down 96% compared to its February peak

Farcaster's monthly protocol revenue has dropped over 96% compared to its February peak.

So far this month, Farcaster has accumulated a revenue of around $15,825 — a significantly lower figure than the $415,900 it made in February, according to Dune Analytics data. Last month's revenue, $32,840, also indicated a considerable decline in popularity.

The decentralized social media service gained traction earlier this year for its user experience. With a blockchain-powered direct reward and engagement system, users can post content and join exclusive communities. Warpcast, a client app on top of Farcaster, also added to the service’s overall popularity. 

“Farcaster initially found success in creating a close-knit community among tech and crypto elites who were looking for a more serious discussion outside of X,” Min Jung, an analyst at Presto Research, told The Block. “Farcaster has since positioned itself as a leading project in SocialFi with novel concepts such as frame and tipping system, where several protocols built on Farcaster have received a large following.”

Its rising popularity and engagement led the team behind the platform to raise a $150 million Series A in one of crypto’s largest funding rounds—with participation from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Haun Ventures and others. The round was reportedly valued at $1 billion, qualifying the company as a unicorn. Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero said at the time that the funding would be used to support the service “in many years to come” and that it would double down on growing daily active users in the rest of 2024.

Presto’s Jung attributed the service's slow delivery of new content to the decline in user engagement. “Recently, the lack of new projects built on Farcaster and the underperformance of ecosystem project tokens have caused users to lose interest,” Jung explained.

Even at its height, Farcaster's early investor, Linda Xie, foresaw challenges in the crypto-centric social media service's scalability beyond the crypto community. "I think the challenging aspects for Farcaster are going to be scaling beyond the crypto community and having clients built on top handle spam," she said at the time, adding, "Spam is a challenging problem for any social media platform, but I think something like Farcaster's power badge is a step in the right direction."