Ethereum team lead slams Farcaster over bot manipulation

Ethereum’s team leader Péter Szilágyi criticized Farcaster for alleged bot manipulation, raising concerns about the platform’s transparency.

Ethereum’s core developer Péter Szilágyi appears to be not a big fan of Farcaster, an open-source, decentralized social network, implying that the platform is rife with bot manipulation.

Farcaster DAU printer:

– Bots pay FC $5 to sign up.
– Bots circle to collect DEGEN clues.
– Degen tokens cover registration fees.

Rinse and repeat.

FC adds the ability to hide bots. “Win win”. Users live in a bubble, FC can “demo” the crazy DAU. Completely healthy ecosystem/s

— Péter Szilágyi (karalabe.eth) (@peter_szilagyi) May 8, 2024

In a recent X thread, Szilágyi expressed skepticism about the Farcaster ecosystem, citing examples of bots allegedly dominating user activity by circling transactions to accumulate DEGEN, an unofficial token created to increase activity in the Farcaster community.

Szilágyi claims there is a “crazy conflict of interest” for network developers not to fix the problem, as non-expert users (those with fewer than 400 followers) are filtered “from everyone else’s feed by default,” adding that the current situation is that the project is a “money and user printer.” ” looks like.

“IMO’s biggest problem is that there is a crazy conflict of interest for FC. [Farcaster] so that developers don’t get rid of bots. It is a money and user printer. They just need to make them annoying enough to cause real users to leave.” Péter Szilágyi

As of press time, Farcaster has not made any public statement on the matter. Crypto.news has reached out to the project and will update the article if we receive any response.

I had a farcaster account for 6 months.

I had 250 followers on Saturday. I currently have 2700. Yes, completely organic growth…

— Péter Szilágyi (karalabe.eth) (@peter_szilagyi) February 5, 2024

This is not the first time Szilágyi has raised concerns about the network’s transparency. In February, the blockchain developer questioned Farcaster’s “organic growth” in an X post, saying his account on Farcaster had grown tenfold in a matter of days with “0 activity.”

Founded in 2020, Farcaster is a decentralized social network similar to X but built on Optimism, a layer 2 solution for Ethereum. In late March, reports emerged that Merkle Manufactory, the company behind Farcaster, was on the verge of securing a significant round of funding led by Paradigm, valuing the company at around $1 billion. In July 2022, the firm raised $30 million in a round led by a16z crypto.