Onboarding new Farcaster users via Supercast
A deep dive on Supercast’s new account creation flow
Max Segall
|Jun 13, 2024
Supercast just released one of the most important crypto features of the year… but first a bit of context.
If you’ve been spending time with consumer app builders, you’ve probably heard lots of talk about Farcaster and their “sufficiently decentralized” social protocol. What might seem like a foreign language at first glance is an incredibly powerful innovation.
“Sufficient decentralization” means that anyone can show up and build on top of the underlying data (social graph, posts, engagements) generated via Farcaster apps like Warpcast, the twitter-esque app managed by the Farcaster team.
Supercast is the second largest Farcaster app (behind Warpcast). It couples the standard Farcaster feed with a unique set of features built for power users, like account sharing, post scheduling, threading, and multi-account linking. They are often championed as the poster child of building on the Farcaster protocol because the Farcaster team didn’t have to build these features themselves. Someone else (Woj) came along and built them permissionlessly.
Last week, Supercast released a game-changing account creation flow, allowing anyone to sign up via email, choose a Farcaster username/PFP, and start posting to Farcaster, all without ever touching the Warpcast app. This is a massive deal, and we expect many other onchain apps to follow their example. Let’s dive in!
Account creation in Supercast
New Supercast users have the option of either signing in with their existing Farcaster account or signing up via email. The new email signup experience is where things get interesting. Here’s how it works under the hood:
User authenticates via email and Privy provisions an embedded wallet under the hood.
User subscribes to Supercast via Stripe, payable via credit card (the proceeds of this are in part used to fund the Farcaster account registration fee).
User selects and registers a username.
User chooses a display name, bio, and PFP.
User confirms details.
Under the hood, the Farcaster account and fid are registered to the Privy embedded wallet. The embedded wallet then signs approval for Supercast to submit messages to the Farcaster protocol on behalf of the newly created account.
This Neynar guide makes it easy to stand up a Farcaster account registration flow for your app
Now the user can start posting to the Farcaster feed, following others, and liking content from their new account!
Wallets and profiles are fully user self-custodied, and users can export their private keys and move to Warpcast (or other clients) at any time. In fact, given the experience is built on Privy embedded wallets, users can hold a token balance on Supercast to fund experiences in the app.
Check out Woj’s release post to see the full flow end-to-end.
Why this matters
This new account creation flow would be like Facebook allowing anyone to create a new profile and start posting to the feed from their Strava accounts. It serves to both broaden the protocol’s network and deepen the range of content posted.
In the coming months, we expect many onchain consumer apps will follow Supercast’s lead, and we couldn’t be more excited to see how this pushes the Farcaster ecosystem forward.
If we can help you with a Farcaster account provisioning flow in your app, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to help!
