Farcaster, the decentralized social media protocol founded by former Coinbase executives and backed by Paradigm, has officially launched Farcaster Pro, its premium subscription service. The rollout was quietly initiated on May 28, and early adopters were rewarded with an unexpected bonus a surprise airdrop of the new PRO token.
Airdrop Frenzy Follows Low-Key Launch
Farcaster Pro is priced at $120 per year, and subscribers who jumped on the early offer quickly realized they got more than just enhanced features. Some users reported receiving as much as $600 worth of PRO tokens in their wallets the very next day. One subscriber posted on X: “Yesterday I paid $120 for Warpcast Pro. Today I got a $600 airdrop.”
To fuel the excitement further, a verification tool was released to help users check whether they were among the first 10,000 Pro subscribers, a milestone that may qualify them for additional future drops.
Strong Uptake in First Hour
The response to Farcaster Pro was immediate. Within one hour of launch, the subscription count hit 3,700 paid users, a staggering figure given the platform’s niche status. According to the official Farcaster account, this translates to “100 paid subscriptions per minute.”
Farcaster Pro is more than just a premium tier for a social app it plays a key role in the larger Farcaster ecosystem, which functions as a decentralized protocol rather than a singular platform. Apps like Warpcast (recently rebranded back to Farcaster) are just one interface among many mini apps built on the Farcaster protocol.
How Farcaster Works
Launched in 2020, Farcaster is built on Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism, combining the security of on-chain identity and transactions with the efficiency of decentralized content storage. This hybrid model allows it to maintain censorship resistance while remaining highly scalable.
Core user actions and identities are written to the blockchain, while social content posts, likes, replies is stored on decentralized hubs that can be hosted by anyone. This makes Farcaster a rare breed in social media: permissionless, composable, and developer-friendly.
User Growth and Engagement
Farcaster’s user engagement has experienced notable momentum in recent months. According to Dune Analytics, the platform’s 7-day average daily active users (DAU) peaked at nearly 50,000 in late March, before seeing a brief dip and rebounding to just under 40,000 DAU as of late May.
This resurgence in activity may be driven in part by the buzz around Farcaster’s evolving monetization model, recent funding success, and a broader wave of interest in decentralized social platforms.
What’s Next?
With a $150 million Series A funding round already under its belt and new features like PRO tokens and paid subscriptions rolling out, Farcaster is positioning itself as a serious contender in the future of social networking where users own their identities, developers build freely, and economic incentives are baked in.
The surprise PRO token airdrop is not just a marketing stunt it signals a shift toward user-aligned monetization in Web3 social protocols. And if Farcaster’s early Pro users are any indication, people are ready to pay upfront when ownership, transparency, and potential upside are on the table.
