Spotlight

Protocol Fundamentals

Spotlight is a social content sharing app and a media distribution channel. It's designed to curate and discover important content and reveal social signal.

The app and protocol are built on the Farcaster identity system and social graph, while the business logic and financial value run through a custom smart contract on Base.

Why Spotlight?

Social media platforms provide users with unlimited shelf space. And in a competitive attention economy, the fundamental incentive is to blast out as much content to as many followers as possible.

Spotlight reorients the posting experience in a few simple ways. First, instead of posting, tweeting or casting to one's own profile page, a poster would "book" someone's spotlight, i.e., post content on someone else's profile. Second, there is a time-based formula that limits the number of posts that can be spotlighted on your profile. Third, there is a demand-based algorithm that dictates the current price to spotlight content on a given profile.

Altogether, this new model is designed to promote deliberate posting within a strong social context.

Why would I pay to post?

To signal that something is important. To reach a certain audience. To promote a new project. To tease a good friend in public. To leave a record of something in someone's supply-constrained media-space (their spotlight). To elevate a meme. To curate content and reveal social signal.

Your account

If you have a Farcaster account, you already have a Spotlight profile. And you may already have earned ETH. To claim earnings or book someone else's spotlight, you'll need to log in via the app and sign a one-time message from one of your protocol-connected addresses.

Who can post?

The default setting is that you can only book someone's spotlight if they follow you on Farcaster. You can toggle this restriction off and allow any Farcaster account to book your spotlight.

Supply, price and fee mechanics

The Spotlight smart contract releases one unit of supply every day. Your profile can accumulate a maximum of eight total units of available supply. Effectively, you have roughly one spotlight available per day for others to book.

The minimum booking price is 0.002 ETH. The contract defines a price formula that can increase rather quickly if all or most of your spotlight supply is being booked as it becomes available.

The protocol takes a 10% fee on all bookings.

Content moderation

All users reserve the right to remove and refund any post on their spotlight for a period of seven days after booking. To remove a spotlight, users refund the full booking fee, less the protocol fee.

Users are encouraged to set a pre-booking message, configurable in the profile settings section of the app. The pre-booking message can communicate any conditions or expectations to people booking your spotlight.

Signal

All spotlight bookings are automatically casted by @spotlightbot as a Farcaster frame. The frame is interactive, allowing any Farcaster user to "signal" the post. The post accumulates a signal score, based on the quantity of users who signal it and the engagement quality of those users.