Farcaster: The Decentralized Social Network Raises $150M and Launches Nodes — Comprehensive Deployment Tutorial Included

5 min readJun 21, 2024

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. This article does not indicate any position of Satea. web3, blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, etc. are potentially risky, so please be sure to exercise caution and independent research before engaging in any related products, services or investments.

Farcaster, a decentralized social protocol, closed a $150 million funding round on 22nd May. The round was led by Paradigm, with participation from a16z crypto, Haun, USV, Variant, and Standard Crypto. The project now boasts a total valuation of $1 billion. As of mid-June, Farcaster has attracted over 500,000 users.

If Farcaster isn’t widely recognized as a decentralized social protocol, its client ‘Warpcast’ is more familiar to Web3 users. Warpcast has attracted numerous prominent figures in the blockchain space, including Vitalik. Additionally, the Base chain Meme coin $Degen was created by the Degen community within Warpcast.

Recently, Farcaster’s official documentation has been quietly updated to include “Hubble” and its installation guide. According to the document:

“Hubble creates a private instance of Farcaster on your machine. It peers with other instances and downloads a copy of the entire network. Messages uploaded to your Hubble instance will be broadcast to the network.
We recommend running Hubble if you are building an app, need access to the latest data or want to help decentralize the network.”

Therefore, we can understand ‘Hubble’ as Farcaster’s RPC node.

While Farcaster has not announced the tokenomics or incentives for running ‘Hubble’, it remains one of the few ways to participate in the Farcaster network currently. Given Farcaster’s leadership in the decentralized social space, operating a Hubble node is a strategic move that could provide access to potential future airdrops.

About Satea

Satea is an industry-leading DePIN and decentralized public chain node aggregator. We assist customers in completing the official application for validator nodes, and facilitate test token staking and server hosting operations with a single click, thereby lowering the barrier to participation in Web3. Currently, we support projects such as Analog, Artela, 0G, Kuzco, Quilibrium, and io.net, among others. Satea is especially suitable for users with limited hardware resources, technical skills, or those who wish to deploy nodes quickly and in large volumes. Satea has now launched a one-click deployment service for Farcaster Hubble nodes (app.satea.io). A limited number of slots are available.

Hubble Node Deployment Tutorial

1. Requirements

Linux system (The scripts currently available on the website only support Linux.)
16 GB RAM
4 CPU cores or vCPU
40 GB available storage
A public IP address with 2281–2283 public ports
RPC endpoints for Ethereum and Optimism Mainnet. (with Alchemy, Infura, or QuickNode)

Download Warpcast and register
Search for ‘Warpcast’ in the App Store or Google Play Store to download the app.

After downloading and creating an account, you will need to pay $5/year to use it. iOS users can auto-renew the fee through their linked Apple ID.

In the Profile section, copy your FID. This is very important as it is the only association between your node and your Farcaster account.

2. Prepare RPC endpoints of Ethereum and Optimism in advance (The following tutorial uses Alchemy as an example)

Register and enter the homepage, then click ‘Create a new app’ to create an app. Enter the name of your app to finish the creation process.

Enter the Apps page and click on ‘Networks’. You will see the API Key for each network. Copy the URLs for both Ethereum and Optimism separately.

3. Install the scripts

On your command line, enter the following script

curl -sSL https://download.thehubble.xyz/bootstrap.sh | bash

Then, following the instructions, enter the Ethereum Mainnet RPC URL, the Optimism L2 Mainnet RPC URL, and your FID or Username, respectively. Note that this is the only association between your node and your Farcaster account, so ensure it remains consistent.

After filling in the above information, the node will start to run.

4. Query and monitor your nodes

In your browser, open http://<server_ip>:3000 and replace <server_ip> with the IP of your node (remove the <> symbols). If you are running on a local/LAN network, enter your Private IP; if you are running on a server, enter the server's Public IP. It may take about one minute to load for the first time, so please be patient and wait for the browser to load.

You will see the Message Sync % of your node. Please ensure this number remains as high as possible. If the message synchronization rate is insufficient, check the network condition of your server.

This completes the deployment of the Farcaster node.

Reference:

https://docs.farcaster.xyz/hubble/hubble