Farcaster developer eyes unicorn valuation as user activity surges: Bloomberg

As daily activity on Farcaster, the Web3 social media service, soars, its developers are reportedly looking for new capital.

Merkle Manufactory, the Web3 social media company behind social network Farcaster and its client Warpcast, is close to completing a funding round led by crypto VC Paradigm that would grant the company unicorn status with a valuation of more of a billion dollars, according to a report at Bloomberg.

Farcaster, which runs on Ethereum and OP Mainnet as well as Farcaster’s off-chain system of peer-to-peer servers called Hubs, has attracted tens of thousands of users, including high-profile figures in the gaming world. cryptography. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has been active on the network, calling it “better in many ways” than X.

In fact, daily posts, called castings, and reactions on Farcaster nearly doubled over the past week to their all-time highs, according to The Block’s data dashboard. The spike in activity comes some time after the peak in daily active users in early February following the introduction of the Frames feature, suggesting that users who tried the network and stayed have become more active.

While Farcaster currently sees significantly more daily business than its Web3 social network competitor, FriendTech, FriendTech has proven to be far more profitable; its developers have raked in more than $28 million in cumulative fees since launch, compared to $850,000 in revenue for Farcaster.

The most popular client for Farcaster, Warpcast, is also developed by Merkle Manufactory, but as a decentralized service, other competing customers exist to interact with the Farcaster protocol. Merkle, which was founded by former Coinbase executives Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, last raised $30 million in July 2022 in a round led by a16z crypto.

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