By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, talks about Farcaster, and people are calling for a return to X.
Autism Capital, a well-known influencer in the crypto community, has requested Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, to spend more time on X as they have reservations about Buterin’s transition to Farcaster.
Autism Capital stated that Farcaster might not be able to succeed in the ongoing fight between cultures. They claimed Vitalik Buterin could make a bigger difference if he interacted with the community on X more instead of just hanging out with a small group of people on Farcaster.
They argued that Buterin’s X account, which has 5.2 million followers, is a far more significant, even though he has fewer postings there nowadays. Buterin has roughly 180,000 followers on Farcaster.
The crypto influencer urged Buterin to “get back on X”, saying that his presence there would greatly assist the progress of the project.
Why Did Vitalik Buterin Leave X?
Elon Musk asked why Vitalik Buterin was leaving X, which got a lot of comments from people within the crypto community. One idea was that Buterin might have been affected by the fact that there were more and more bot accounts on the site.
Why did he leave?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2024
One more person agreed with this and brought up a post from January 2024 by Tyler John that talked about the bot problem. John said that whenever Buterin posts, a lot of “sycophants, crypto bots, and followers” spam his comments.
According to John, “Vitalik Buterin has to append every reply with “srry 4 ratio-ing” because immediately afterwards a deluge of sycophants, crypto bots, and followers rains down on the post with tickers, memes, and expressions of praise and all the OP can see is #ETH and $SOL for three days.”
In response to the community’s questions, Buterin explained that his decision to move to Farcaster was triggered by several things.
Justifying his switch to Farcaster, Buterin agreed that there were more and more bot accounts on X that were spamming his posts and making it hard to have constructive conversations. Buterin also talked about a security breach on his X account, in which criminals put up phishing links and stole money from unsuspecting users.
What Is Farcaster?
Farcaster is a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency project that wants to change the way people use social media by letting users own their data while keeping a familiar Web 2.0 layout. This method makes it different from other web3 apps, which have mostly been used for financial reasons.
Even though platforms like X, TikTok, and Facebook are more popular, Farcaster is attracting attention for its recent improvements and fresh ideas. By leveraging Optimism, a layer-2 scaling solution on Ethereum, Farcaster combines the best of web2 and web3 to create decentralized social networks with improved user experience and data control.
Though Buterin has come under fire for his choice, he is nonetheless upbeat about Farcaster’s prospects. He lauded the web3 social platform’s inventive features, especially “frames”, which turn posts into interactive mini-apps that improve user interaction.
According to Dune Analytics, after frames were introduced, Farcaster saw a 400% increase in daily active users. In just one week, the daily active user count went from 5,000 to over 24,700, showing a big jump in user engagement.
