**Dan Romero** is the Co-founder of [Farcaster](https://iq.wiki/wiki/farcaster), a decentralized platform designed for constructing social networks within the [Web3](https://iq.wiki/wiki/web3) ecosystem. [\[1\]](#cite-id-xtlai35wuyi)[\[2\]](#cite-id-jkbp4omb1hn)[\[3\]](#cite-id-1j0sd1ws4bg)  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](nGDIdbdtdjE)$$  
  
# Career  
  
## Coinbase  
  
Prior to joining [Coinbase](https://iq.wiki/wiki/coinbase) in 2014, Dan initially declined an offer in 2013 by [Fred Ehrsam](https://iq.wiki/wiki/fred-ehrsam) to join Coinbase and help with customer support. He chose to work at a SaaS startup instead. Over the next year, Dan became intrigued with Bitcoin and reached out to [Fred](https://iq.wiki/wiki/fred-ehrsam) about the role at [Coinbase](https://iq.wiki/wiki/coinbase).  
  
> "Over the next year, I started to become more intrigued by Bitcoin. I got so obsessed with it that I reached back out to Fred (a year later after he had offered me that first role) and told him that I wanted to quit the SaaS company and join in whatever role I could take. That’s how I started working at Coinbase as employee #20"  
  
When he joined in 2014, his first job was to find use cases for [Bitcoin](https://iq.wiki/wiki/bitcoin). [\[4\]](#cite-id-ycuj7ve4vkm)[\[7\]](#cite-id-qw1bqb5pq7)  
  
> "For example, I tried to get merchants like Dell.com and Expedia.com to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. That use case didn’t end up working and I spent my first year not moving the needle at all. It was pretty frustrating." - Dan on roles he took at Coinbase [\[7\]](#cite-id-qw1bqb5pq7)  
  
In his time at the firm, Romero worked on “almost every aspect” of the Coinbase business including banking partnerships and both consumer and institutional businesses. [\[4\]](#cite-id-ycuj7ve4vkm)[\[5\]](#cite-id-oac56jjd8me)  
  
On April 12, 2019, Dan announced on his blog that he would be leaving Coinbase at the end of April. [\[4\]](#cite-id-ycuj7ve4vkm)  
  
> "I’m planning to take some time to figure out what’s next, but I remain as optimistic as ever about the potential of cryptocurrency and Coinbase."[\[4\]](#cite-id-ycuj7ve4vkm)  
  
## Farcaster  
  
In 2020, Dan Romero co-founded [Farcaster](https://iq.wiki/wiki/farcaster) alongside [Varun Srinivasan](https://iq.wiki/wiki/varun-srinivasan), described in the project's own documentation, as a "sufficiently decentralized social network built on [Ethereum](https://iq.wiki/wiki/ethereum)." On how Farcaster came to be, Dan commented:  
  
> "I've been in crypto 10 years and I was at Coinbase for five of those and then have been building Farcaster for the last three. And Farcaster is a decentralized social network. So if you were to use the app, it feels very much like Twitter, but we have a few different features and one of those is Frames."  
  
[Farcaster](https://iq.wiki/wiki/farcaster) is a decentralized protocol designed specifically for building and connecting social apps. It aims to create a censorship-free environment where users have full control over their data and audience. To achieve this, Farcaster employs a sufficiently decentralized network architecture that lets users control their social graph and enables them to interact with various apps on the network via a single identity. [\[3\]](#cite-id-1j0sd1ws4bg)  
  
On January 26, 2024, daily active users on Farcaster surged following the launch of a new feature, Frames. Frames effectively turns Farcaster-based posts into interactive mini-apps, allowing users to mint[ NFTs](https://iq.wiki/wiki/non-fungible-token-nft), play games, and use instant checkouts directly from their social feed without leaving the platform. [\[6\]](#cite-id-9jmdekugxbp)  
  
> "Frames are interactive social media posts. And the best analog to think about is when you use Twitter, you can post a tweet with text, image, video, and then there's one type of post that you can do on Twitter that has some interactivity, and that's a poll, right? So you can pick the options you want, and then as a kind of a reader or a viewer, you can vote in someone's poll and then see the results." - Dan explained  
>   
> "But with a poll, Twitter controls that entire experience and you can't modify it. You can't come up with a new creative way of displaying that poll or another use for those buttons. It's pretty constrained"  
>   
> "With Frames, it gives developers a kind of total canvas within our app to kind of display content and then have interactivity, define what the buttons that will show up next to a frame. And so it's kind of almost like a mini app within an app. And it's kind of like a mini app within an app" [\[6\]](#cite-id-9jmdekugxbp)  
  
$$widget0 [YOUTUBE@VID](67nxKVvXItM)$$

After schooling at Duke University, Dan Romero worked at Coinbase from 2014 to April 2019. 

Vice President, Coinbase

Co-Founder, Farcaster

ZOPj-4NBaAA

67nxKVvXItM

nGDIdbdtdjE

Dan Romero is a tech entrepreneur who co-founded Farcaster, an Optimism-based protocol for decentralized social networking, and formerly served as Vice Presiden...

IQ.wiki

Popular Wikis

Popular Wikis

Popular Wikis

Popular Wikis

Timeline of Events

Dan Romero

Vice President, Coinbase

Co-Founder, Farcaster

IQ

Company

Resources

Policies