ShonClub
Real-time voice clubs, native to Farcaster
Created on 16th May 2025
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ShonClub
Real-time voice clubs, native to Farcaster
The problem ShonClub solves
ShonClub addresses the absence of real-time, community-driven audio spaces within the Farcaster ecosystem.
Despite Farcaster's strength in decentralized social graphs and asynchronous conversation (casts, reactions, etc), there is currently no native or embedded solution for synchronous voice interactions. This limits the ability for communities, builders, and niche groups to connect more organically and instantly.
ShonClub solves this by:
- Enabling real-time audio rooms directly in Farcaster mini apps.
- Letting users create and manage their own clubs with minimal friction.
- Supporting up to 2000+ concurrent peers per room.
- Providing core roles (listener, speaker, moderator) to reflect natural conversation flow.
- Working towards automated moderation tools, such as intelligent room timeout based on peer activity.
- Opening paths to onchain-native monetization, including live gifting and NFT-based club access.
In essence, ShonClub brings live presence to the Farcaster graph — a foundational building block for deeper social interaction onchain.
Challenges I ran into
One of the biggest challenges was managing the state of real-time audio rooms when a moderator unexpectedly leaves — either due to refreshing the frame or navigating away from the mini app. Since Farcaster mini apps run inside ephemeral environments, detecting a user's true "exit" is non-trivial.
To overcome this, I built a side server that tracks active WebRTC peers in each room. When no active peers are detected for more than 10 minutes, the club automatically closes. This workaround ensures that rooms don’t remain open indefinitely, improving UX while avoiding premature shutdowns.
Another challenge was scaling audio infrastructure to handle hundreds (or even thousands) of concurrent peers per room. I fine-tuned peer connection logic and server load balancing to ensure stable and low-latency communication, even under high load.
Tracks Applied (1)
Mini-apps
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