{"id":"dan-romero","title":"Dan Romero","content":"**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)​\n\n[YOUTUBE@VID](nGDIdbdtdjE)\n\n## Career\n\n### Coinbase\n\nPrior 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).\n\n> \"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\"\n\nWhen 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)​\n\n> \"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)\n\nIn 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)​\n\nOn April 12, 2019, Dan announced on his blog that he would be leaving Coinbase at the end of April. [\\[4\\]](#cite-id-ycuj7ve4vkm)​\n\n> \"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)\n\n### Farcaster\n\nIn 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:\n\n> \"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.\"\n\n​[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)​\n\nOn 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)​\n\n> \"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\n>\n> \"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\"\n>\n> \"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)\n\n[YOUTUBE@VID](https://youtube.com/watch?v=67nxKVvXItM)\n\n## Dan Romero Joins Tempo\n\nOn February 9, 2026, Dan Romero was appointed to a senior role at [Tempo](https://iq.wiki/wiki/tempo), a [layer 1 ](https://iq.wiki/wiki/layer-1)blockchain focused on stablecoin-based payments. His appointment follows the sale of [Farcaster](https://iq.wiki/wiki/farcaster) to Neynar in late January 2026, which transferred Farcaster’s codebase, applications,[ smart contracts](https://iq.wiki/wiki/smart-contract), and its AI project Clanker to the acquiring company.\n\nTempo has been expanding rapidly since emerging from incubation by Stripe and crypto venture firm Paradigm. In October 2025, the company raised $500 million in Series A funding at a $5 billion valuation, led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital. During the same period, Tempo scaled its team significantly, growing from 15 employees in September 2025 to between 40 and 50 by November.\n\nThe company launched its private testnet in September 2025, with a focus on enterprise use cases such as cross-border remittances, payroll processing, and microtransactions. Tempo is positioning itself as infrastructure for global stablecoin payments and lists OpenAI, Visa, and Shopify among its design partners. Romero’s appointment aligns with Tempo’s broader strategy to compete with established stablecoin issuers as Stripe and Paradigm deepen their involvement in blockchain infrastructure aimed at institutional adoption. 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[[8]](#cite-id-pi24Fu1sl3yBpb4u)\",\"Included details on Tempo's $500 million Series A funding, team expansion from 15 to nearly 50 employees, and the launch of its private testnet. [[8]](#cite-id-pi24Fu1sl3yBpb4u)\",\"Noted Tempo's focus on enterprise use cases and its listing of OpenAI, Visa, and Shopify as design partners. [[8]](#cite-id-pi24Fu1sl3yBpb4u)\"]},{\"title\":\"Events\",\"subtitle\":\"Dates for two events were updated to a more specific format.\",\"variant\":\"modified\",\"changeCount\":2,\"changes\":[\"Updated the date for the event related to leaving Coinbase from '2019-04' to '2019-04-01'.\",\"Updated the date for the event related to co-founding Farcaster from '2020-01' to '2020-01-01'.\"]},{\"title\":\"References\",\"subtitle\":\"A new reference was added.\",\"variant\":\"added\",\"changeCount\":1,\"changes\":[\"Added new reference: 'dan;s announcement' from x.com.\"]}]}]}"}