Original author: Sid Shekhar

Original compilation: Deep Chao TechFlow

Weve seen an interesting phenomenon take shape over the past few weeks. Channels on Farcaster have become hubs for grassroots community formation. Over 43% of Farcaster account holders have never casted (similar to a tweet or Reddit post) before. But nearly 70% of people who cast did so in a channel. This week I took a deep dive into the public cast data on channels and their usage to see what the data tells us.

The average number of channels a Farcaster user posts to is about 8!

While this number is obviously influenced by upper-tier users (like the @degentokenbase bot who replied to over 2000 channels), it’s still a pretty big number for the average!

Looking in more detail, I listed the top 15 channels by number of followers and found that 7 of them are crypto native and/or have some relationship with Farcaster, and the other 8 are general purpose non-crypto channel.

For those who post to multiple channels over time, what is the overlap between channel usage?

Overlap between the top 15 channels on Farcaster and their users

Several things stand out. First, there are four core channels (base, degen, farcasterandframes), has a large number of users posting in several of these channels. On the other hand, there are some extremely irrelevant non-encrypted channels, e.g.tabletop(for board gamers) andfront-endand their own sub-communities.

Prolific channel user

If an average user posts on 8 channels, how is it actually distributed? Categorizing by the number of channels a user posts to shows this distribution:

Understandably, with such a huge list of options, choosing which channel to post on can be quite a difficult choice, so choosing 2-4 channels to post on is more appropriate. Its like being on a restaurant buffet menu and you end up choosing the same few dishes over and over out of habit and comfort.

However, the interesting thing is:

• 21% of users don’t post on the channel at all (mostly first-time posters)

• Nearly the same number (19%) of users are prolific channel users, posting in 10 or more channels

Topics are scattered

So which channels get the most attention?

As we saw before, one way to segment channels is to differentiate between crypto-native channels and more generic channels, clustered on the right side of the image below.

Farcaster Channel (larger bubbles indicate more followers)

As an emerging feature of crypto-native channels on Farcaster, it’s exciting to see them organically develop highly engaged sub-communities. From likedegenandnounsFrom large channels like this to several smaller channels that have popped up in the past few weekshigher，senditand famousticker, many channels have a meme coin or NFT series of the same name to unite.

While it’s difficult to see general non-crypto channels like founders or front-ends uniting around tokens, it’s possible to see every crypto-native channel on the network having some type of token or on-chain asset tied to it. possibility of connection.

Reddit, Farcaster, and the road ahead

Last week, 19 years after its founding and with millions of users and posts, Reddit IPOed at a $7 billion valuation. For a certain segment of the internet, Reddit is their de facto home page of the internet, a central hub for all kinds of content, including news, discussion, opinion, and entertainment, all provided and curated by its users. The similarities between Reddit and Farcaster have been well documented.

How do Reddits subforums compare to the Farcaster topic space?

Subforums (larger bubbles indicate more subscribers)

With the exception of funny, which tops every other subforum, you can see a wide range of general topics, all of which have between 20 million and 30 million subscribers, many of whom were automatically subscribed when they joined Reddit.

Channels on Farcaster were initially described as decentralized subforums when they first launched last year. For those starting out with Farcaster, the entire platform will look and feel like one large cryptocurrency subforum. However, as the network grows, its interesting to see the growth of new channels, both with crypto-native themes and with decidedly more general themes.

There are over 100,000 subforums and close to 5,000 channels on Farcaster, and some topics (such as memes) have large communities on both.

Channel on Farcaster (left) and subforum on Reddit (right)

As Farcaster matures and the selection of feature-balanced clients (not just Warpcast) continues to grow, it will be interesting to see which approach becomes more dominant in building a professional, cryptocurrency-focused The original sub-community network is to build a general network similar to Reddit with wider appeal.

Channels, including how they are curated and the communities that form around them, will play a key role in shaping the future direction and identity of the network. As users continue to switch between channels, they will collectively determine the types of communities and conversations that define the Farcaster experience.