In this week’s issue:

• Touch Grass: Revving Your Farcaster Engine: an Incomplete Purple App Starter Pack

• Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3, Crypto + AI Jobs of the Week

Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3 + AI Jobs of the Week

Looking for your next move in (or into) web3, crypto, or AI? Here are some fire openings for this week, all remote, all posted in the past four days:

• Rootstock Labs is on the lookout for a Community Manager

• Domino Data wants a new Technical Product Marketing Director  🔥💰

• Relai needs a Head of Technology

• Hype is looking for an Community Creative Lead 🔥

• Risk Labs needs a fab Senior Backend Engineer to join their team

• Coinbase is on the hunt for a Software Engineer, Backend 🔥💰

• MedToken wants to find a Web3 Graphics Designer 

• Aptos Labs needs a Grants Analyst—is it you?

• Relai is also looking for a Head of Product 🔥

• Want to be the Senior Director or Product Marketing (hybrid position) at Snorkel AI? Get it. 🔥💰

Want to see your company's job listed here? Reply to this email and lmk.

Step 1: Getting in the purple door (it's easier than you think)

If you’re more than a little tired of the algorithms, ads, and frankly bullshit of web2 social (think IG, TikTok, Facebook, etc), chances are you want a decentralized social account. And Farcaster is a good place to get one. Lens (they do DeFi lending and borrowing) also looks pretty cool, I just haven’t had the time/energy to get started over there as of yet.

Unlike every other social platform that lets any rando with an email address join, Farcaster requires you to pay a small annual fee (around $5) to register your username onchain. At first I was like wait wtf, but quickly realized part of the why.

That tiny barrier to entry filters out 90% of the bots, scammers, and people who just want to be shitty to strangers for free (they do exist!).

Interest piqued? Download Farcaster and follow the setup process. You'll connect a wallet, pay the fee, and then… you're in. Not sure wtf I mean by “connecting a wallet?” Peep issue 16 of Babe for how to create a wallet on Coinbase.

Step 2: Niche and sub-niche lexicons (are cool)

Every platform has its own language, and Farcaster is no exception. Here's the bare minimum of terms I’ve gathered over the past two months—they’ll probably help you better understand wtf people are talking about when you first enter the scene. You can also just ask people on the app, as there’s literally always someone willing to help out in a non-condescending way. It’s awesome.

Casts = posts (not tweets, not updates, casts). The basic unit of Farcaster content.

Channels = communities organized around topics (like Discord channels but public). Think /photography or /founders—you join the ones that interest you.

Frames = interactive mini-apps that live inside casts (think polls, games, mints). They let you do stuff without leaving the feed.

Degen = both a compliment and an insult, depending on context. Can mean "degenerate gambler" or "someone who takes risks" or just "you're wild."

gm = good morning, but also a general greeting any time of day. It's like "hello" but more community-spirited.

Based = this is good/cool/I approve (not political). Basically means "I fuck with this."

Fren = friend (yes, it's spelled wrong on purpose, this happens a lot). Internet speak that somehow feels more genuine than "friend."

Next week's issue will most likely include a non-exhaustive glossary of decentralized social terms, just for kicks and because words are neat.

And for real, with Farcaster you can participate meaningfully without knowing every piece of crypto slang. You don't need to memorize any of this shit to get started—just jump in, lurk a bit, and pick up the language as you go. Kinda like learning by living somewhere, not by studying a textbook.

Step 3: Channel surfing (literally)

Channels are where the magic happens. They're like subreddits but with better vibes and fewer moderators on power trips. Here are some starter channels that won't make you feel like you need a PhD in blockchain:

/photography - Pretty pictures, no crypto required /books - Actual book recommendations from actual readers /firefits - People sharing their best outfits (my fave channel) /founders - Startup chat without the LinkedIn energy /fitness - Workout accountability minus the toxic gym culture /poetry - You know I had to pick this one /videolab - Where people share videos, video tips, and video shit they’re working on /babe - for this newsletter, obvs

With channels, it’s probably a good idea to first spend a few days reading and understanding the vibes. Each channel has its own personality, and jumping in with corporate speak or self-promotion or BDE is not a good look. Which, when is it ever?

Step 4: The art of the cast (or… just fucking write how you write)

Good casts on Farcaster feel like overhearing an interesting conversation, not like someone's trying to sell you something. Here are some non-expert tips on exactly this:

Share actual experiences: "Just spent 3 hours debugging CSS and finally fixed it by adding one line. Why am I like this?" beats "CSS productivity tips from a frontend expert 🧵"

Ask genuine questions: "What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?" gets more engagement than "What's your favorite growth hacking strategy?"

Show your work: Progress pics, screenshots, random thoughts—people want to see the messy human behind the profile

Be wrong in public: Some of my most engaged casts are me being confused about something and genuinely asking for help or input

What doesn't work: LinkedIn thought leadership, humble bragging, asking for follows, posting the same thing in 15 different channels.

Step 5: The tipping economy (yes, you can earn money for being yourself)

One of the wildest things about Farcaster is that people will literally pay you for saying something interesting. The platform has a built-in tipping culture using various tokens—$DEGEN, $NOICE, and $TIPN being some of the most common.

For example, you earn any of these tokens (and many more) by:

• Posting in specific channels

• Getting tipped by other users (either USDC on Tip Tuesdays or through others liking your casts)

• Being active and generally not annoying

You can also tip others by liking their posts or replying with an amount (like "100 $NOICE" or just "100") to casts you like. It's micro-payments for micro-content, and it actually works.

I just checked and I’ve now made $113 in roughly two months for just by being myself. Why? So far the incentives seem to be aligned around genuine interaction, not engagement farming. That could change with platform growth and time, but for rn it seems to be the case and that case is working.

Step 6: Mini apps are fun (when they work)

Mini apps are interactive elements embedded in casts—polls, games, minting tools, quizzes, multi-step flows. They're like tiny applications that live inside the social feed, powered by what's technically called "Frames" but now mostly referred to as mini apps when they do anything more complex than a simple poll.

When you see a cast with buttons, I’m pretty sure that means it’s a mini app. Some let you:

• Mint an NFT directly from the cast

• Play simple games or enter contests

• Vote in polls or submit responses

• Swap tokens or tip creators

• Sign up for events or follow accounts

• Go through multi-step flows (like mint → confirm → share)

They can be buggy as fuck and break constantly, but when they work, they're pretty cool. One of my favorites is called Poolsuite, and it just plays funky music while showing what looks like old home videos of people on vacation somewhere beachy. It’s got a very 80s/90s aesthetic and I’m v into it.

Step 7: The thing that keeps me up at night (growth vs soul)

Look, I want Farcaster to succeed. I want more people to discover this weird little corner of the internet where strangers are genuinely nice to each other and you can make $20 for posting a photo of your cat.

But I also have this gnawing fear that as it grows, it'll turn into every other social platform—algorithmically optimized engagement farming, influencer bullshit, and people gaming the system for clout instead of connection.

What I like about Farcaster right now is that it's small enough for real community (and I’m not even “early days” on it) but big enough to be interesting. It's that sweet spot where you can still have actual conversations without someone sliding into your replies to pitch their NFT drop or productivity course.

We've all watched this movie before. Platform starts small and genuine, gets popular, attracts the growth hackers and aggressive thought leaders and influencers, and suddenly everyone's optimizing for metrics instead of meaning. The very things that made it special get killed by the success. I’m not even sure if this is avoidable, but I naively hope it is.

Maybe the crypto-native foundation and ownership model will prevent this. Maybe not. Maybe the $5 barrier to entry will always filter out the worst actors. Maybe not.

For now, while it's still weird and wonderful and slightly chaotic, I'm going to enjoy it. And if you join, please help foster the weird. We need more humans, not more personal brands.

PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever financial advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.