Farcaster Valued at Up to $1 Billion USD

According to Bloomberg sources, Merkle Manufactory, a renowned developer with the decentralized social network Farcaster, is currently in the process of raising investment funds with a valuation of up to $1 billion.

Leading this fundraising round is Paradigm, one of the top cryptocurrency investment funds, which has previously invested in several successful crypto projects, including million-dollar unicorns.

Dan Romero, co-founder of Merkle Manufactory, confirmed the information about their SocialFi project fundraising in a post on Farcaster on March 29, without disclosing further specific details.

Merkle Manufactory was founded in 2020 by Romero and Varun Srinivasan, both former managers at the Coinbase exchange. The company currently has two main products: the decentralized social network Farcaster and Warpcast – a social media app with a interface similar to Twitter.

Previously, in July 2022, the company raised $30 million from the a16z Crypto fund.

Introduction to Farcaster

Farcaster is a SocialFi protocol that provides decentralized social applications, where users control their own data and developers can build apps without requiring third-party permissions. This platform is also enthusiastically endorsed by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum.

Anyone can post short text messages on the Farcaster network and connect to their Ethereum address. Verifying ownership of an ETH address will activate features such as displaying NFTs and using them as profile pictures for users.

According to the developers:

Farcaster is a decentralized social network where not only what you say is stored but also what you can prove on the blockchain. Anyone can build a client app to broadcast messages on the Farcaster network.

We have a guide that will show you how to build a simple app to read messages from any user. We are also building the first client app to make it easy for everyone to get started, currently in beta stage.