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Overview

In this guide you'll learn about emerging onchain social paradigms and build interactive Mini Apps with MiniKit.

Onchain Social

Most of today's social apps follow the same formula: You sign in with an email, scroll a feed, and tap links that take you somewhere else.

But under the surface, your identity, content, and interactions are owned by the platform not by you. And if you want to build something new, you're building on top of a platform, never inside it.

Onchain social flips that model. It's a new paradigm where identity is user-owned, feeds are programmable, and apps exist directly inside the conversation.

  • Identity is portable and user-owned: A Farcaster ID (FID) you control, not an account gated by a provider.
  • Apps are embedded, not linked out: Rich, interactive experiences run natively inside posts, messages, or notifications.
  • Developers build inside the network: Not on the sidelines, but as first-class citizens in the social graph.

This isn't about replacing platforms, it's about removing the walls between users, developers, and the experiences they create.

Mini Apps: The Interface Layer for Onchain Social

Mini Apps are lightweight, expressive web apps that live inside the social feed. They launch instantly from a cast or notification, feel native, and don't require logins or installs.

Think: polls, games, stores, chats all opening right inside the feed, personalised to you.

For users, that means seamless, interactive experiences that respond to your onchain identity. For builders, it means deploying directly into the conversation, not redirecting people away from it.

You're not building for the platform. You're building inside it.

Build with MiniKit

Install MiniKit

The fastest way to build a Mini App is with MiniKit, a developer toolkit that handles the hard parts for you.

Terminal
npx create-onchain@alpha --mini

Follow our quickstart guide to create a Mini App in under 10 minute Here .

Have an existing app? you can integrate MiniKit into an existing app and unlock social distribution without hassle: installation guide here.

In seconds, you get a working Mini App with:

  • A full frontend + backend scaffold
  • Built-in support for identity, notifications, and webhooks
  • Native integrations with Base and OnchainKit

Context: Apps That Know Where They Are

App.tsx
import { useMiniKit } from "@coinbase/onchainkit/minikit";
 
export default function App() {
  const { context } = useMiniKit();
 
  console.log(context?.user?.fid, context?.user?.displayName);
}

Mini Apps don't just run in social feeds, they understand where they were opened and by whom.

Using context from the Farcaster protocol, a Mini App knows whether it was launched from a cast, a channel, a user profile, or a notification and exactly which FID opened it.

That makes personalisation effortless and lets you build stateful, intelligent interactions without asking users to sign in.

Make Your Existing App A Mini App

It’s easy to turn an existing Next.js app into a Mini App with MiniKit. You can add onchain identity, native social distribution, and notifications without making major changes to your codebase. Your app becomes instantly accessible inside the social feed, reaching users directly where conversations happen.
Follow our Guide to get started.

Next Steps

Mini Apps Are Already Redefining What Social Can Be

You don’t have to imagine it. You can build with it today.

With open identity, composable clients, and scalable infra, the next generation of social isn't just onchain it's customisable, portable, and deeply interactive.

If you've ever wanted to rethink how people connect online, now's your moment.

Explore the MiniKit docs