Onchain Social
In this guide, you’ll discover the world of onchain social applications and learn how to build interactive Mini Apps that live directly inside social feeds, creating seamless user experiences without traditional platform limitations.
What Is Onchain Social?
Traditional social media follows a familiar but limiting pattern: users sign in with email addresses, scroll through centralized feeds, and click links that redirect them away from the conversation. While this model works, it has fundamental limitations that onchain social aims to solve.
Traditional Social
Platform-owned identity and content with limited user control
Onchain Social
User-owned identity, programmable feeds, and embedded applications
The Onchain Social Paradigm
Onchain social represents a fundamental shift in how we think about digital identity and social interactions:
Traditional Model Problems:
- Your identity, content, and interactions are owned by the platform
- Building requires working on top of platforms, never inside them
- Users must leave conversations to access new experiences
- Developers are limited by platform APIs and restrictions
Onchain Social Solutions:
- Portable Identity: Your Farcaster ID (FID) belongs to you, not locked to any single platform
- Embedded Experiences: Rich, interactive apps run natively inside posts and conversations
- Developer Freedom: Build as first-class citizens within the social graph
- User Ownership: Control your data, content, and social connections
This isn’t about replacing existing platforms—it’s about removing the walls between users, developers, and the experiences they create together.
What You’ll Build
By the end of this guide, you’ll have created a fully functional Mini App with these capabilities:
Interactive Social Features
Polls, games, and collaborative tools that run inside social feeds
Context-Aware Experiences
Apps that know who opened them and adapt accordingly
Onchain Integration
Direct access to wallets, DeFi protocols, and blockchain transactions
Seamless Authentication
User-owned identity through Farcaster without separate logins
Mini Apps: The Interface for Onchain Social
Mini Apps are lightweight, expressive web applications that live directly inside social feeds. They launch instantly without installation and provide rich, interactive experiences that respond to your onchain identity.
What makes Mini Apps special:
- Embedded experiences that don’t redirect users away from conversations
- Social context awareness - they know who opened them and from where
- Onchain identity integration with automatic personalization
- Native feel within social platforms
Use cases include:
- Interactive polls and real-time voting
- Social games and entertainment
- E-commerce with instant checkout
- DeFi interfaces and portfolio management
- NFT showcases and trading
- Collaborative decision-making tools
Mini Apps offer developers direct access to social distribution - you’re building inside the conversation, not trying to pull users away from it.
Build Your First Mini App
Install MiniKit and Create Your Project
The fastest way to build a Mini App is with MiniKit, which handles authentication, social context, and onchain integrations automatically.
Create a new Mini App:
Start the development server:
Your Mini App should now be running at http://localhost:3000
with a fully functional social interface.
What you get out of the box:
- Complete frontend and backend scaffold
- Built-in support for Farcaster identity and notifications
- Native integrations with Base blockchain and OnchainKit
- Responsive design optimized for mobile social feeds
- Development tools for testing and debugging
The MiniKit scaffold includes example components and pages to help you understand the architecture quickly.
Understand Social Context
Mini Apps have access to rich social context that traditional web apps lack. This context makes personalization effortless and enables intelligent interactions.
Access user and social context:
Verified context properties:
- User identity: FID (always available), username, display name, profile image URL
- Client status: Whether the user has added your Mini App to their favorites
- Launch context: General location information about where the Mini App was opened
- Safe area insets: For proper mobile layout within Farcaster clients
Always handle cases where context might be undefined, especially during development and testing.
Build Interactive Features
Create engaging social experiences that leverage the Mini App’s embedded nature:
Example: Social Voting App
Use the user’s FID to prevent duplicate votes and create personalized experiences without requiring separate authentication.
Add Onchain Integration
Enhance your Mini App with blockchain functionality using OnchainKit:
Your Mini App can now trigger blockchain transactions directly from social interactions.
Deploy and Test Your Mini App
Deploy your Mini App to make it accessible within social feeds:
Deploy to Vercel (recommended):
Test your Mini App:
- Local testing: Use the MiniKit development tools
- Frame testing: Test as a Farcaster Frame
- Social testing: Deploy and test in actual social contexts
- Performance testing: Ensure fast loading in mobile environments
Always test your Mini App in actual social contexts before broad deployment, as the social environment can affect performance and user experience.
Convert Existing Apps to Mini Apps
Transform your existing Next.js application into a Mini App without major restructuring. The process is straightforward and doesn’t require rebuilding your entire application.
Complete Integration Guide
Follow our comprehensive guide for integrating MiniKit into existing applications with step-by-step instructions, environment setup, and testing procedures.
Key integration steps:
- Install MiniKit as part of OnchainKit
- Wrap your app with
MiniKitProvider
- Add social context integration to existing components
- Configure environment variables and deployment
For new projects, use the MiniKit CLI for automatic setup with all features pre-configured.
Advanced MiniKit Features
Once you have your basic Mini App running, explore advanced capabilities:
Notifications & Engagement
Send push notifications to users who have added your Mini App
Authentication Patterns
Implement Farcaster authentication for secure, persistent sessions
Profile Integration
Navigate users to Farcaster profiles and build social connections
Frame Management
Allow users to save your Mini App for easy access
Best Practices & Troubleshooting
Building successful Mini Apps requires understanding social-specific patterns and common pitfalls:
Social Design Patterns
Design patterns and best practices for building social Mini Apps
Debugging Guide
Common issues and solutions when developing Mini Apps
Performance Optimization
Optimize loading times and user experience for mobile social environments
Coinbase Wallet Integration
Specific guidance for optimizing Mini Apps in Coinbase Wallet