TechFlow news: In response to X user Liron Shapira's claim that "Farcaster messages are stored in hubs that don't use blockchain technology, so Farcaster isn't a genuine blockchain use case," Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin replied: "Farcaster requests are stored in a CRDT; their goal is achieving eventual consistency of the message set. The only 'chain' used by Farcaster is Ethereum (via Optimism)."
"Ethereum isn't used merely for usernames—it also stores a registry indicating which accounts are allowed to send messages, and this information is replicated across CRDT nodes. This is crucial for anti-spam; otherwise, everyone would use it to back up encrypted hard drives, movies, etc."
"Placing the registry on-chain ensures it is both (i) resistant to control by centralized actors and (ii) resilient against Sybil attacks. Therefore, the on-chain registry plays a critical role in making Farcaster's underlying network a robust, neutral infrastructure not dependent on any single entity."
