Recently I joined Farcaster, a decentralized social network. It has a look and feel that’s similar to an old skin of twitter. But it’s got a twist, names connected to the ethereum blockchain. Farcaster users can use a blockchain name generated by Farcaster OR they can use their own .eth name.
ENS usernames are live on @farcaster_xyz !
Here's a peek into how they work with the protocol: pic.twitter.com/OkNTGk3JMv
— Varun Srinivasan (@varunsrin) July 26, 2023
And that’s where it gets interesting because unlike X (formerly twitter), where .eth is merely a vanity string that one can add to their display name, a .eth can actually be one’s real live username on Farcaster. It’s the name you @ and it’s the user’s web URL. Check out Farcaster Co-founder Dan Romero for example. He’s @dwr.eth and https://warpcast.com/dwr.eth. So it’s not only the legit username, it’s also the legit URL for the user.
Similar to other social networks, one can have followers and follow. One can also cast (similar to tweeting) and DM, etc. In doing so, the value of a .eth name is shaped along the way. How many followers does the account have? How popular is it? How connected is the name to the identity of the owner?
Could Dan Romero, Co-founder of Farcaster, username dwr.eth on his own social network, ranked in google search for it, afford to actually lose his name now? Probably not. The consequences could be dire for his identity. Notice how there’s no mention of wallet in this context. It’s the actual tagged, indexed, foundational username on a social network with a huge following. Which means if Dan told me he wanted a loan against that name, I’d feel pretty confident that he couldn’t just walk away from it. He has too much to lose.
Considering the potential value of this data, I’ve gone ahead and wrote a script here on eth.loan that checks to see if a .eth name is an active username on Farcaster and if so, what are the metrics behind it. Here’s an example of Dan Romero: dwr.eth.loan.
This will probably be refined more over time. In the interim, I couldn’t help but rush to put it up. It just seems so cool and valuable. Within the next week or so, I intend to conduct an experiment related to it all, but stay tuned for that.