On August 10th, Friend.tech's invitation-only testing version was launched, and on the first day, the trading volume exceeded 4400 ETH (approximately $8.1 million), becoming another hit project after BALD by Base Chain. As of the time of writing, the total trading volume on Friend.tech has exceeded 30,000 ETH, with protocol fees reaching $1.68 million in the past 24 hours. This places it second in the rankings, surpassing Lido and Tron, and following closely behind Ethereum.
1. What is Friend.tech?
Friend.tech is a decentralized social platform built on Coinbase's Layer 2 network, Base Chain. It establishes a strong link with Twitter to acquire users' Web2 identities, thus enabling them to potentially profit. In this product, each user can be tokenized, and their influence can be directly priced by the market.
2. Highlights of Friend.tech
Friend.tech's core is the economy of fans. Users need to pre-deposit 0.01 E before using the app. ETH serves as the primary payment currency within the app and is used to purchase shares of other users. Shares represent tokenized user influence, and for buyers, acquiring shares grants them permission to interact with the purchased user (friend slot). After the purchase, users can engage in one-on-one conversations. To prevent spam, each holder can send three messages before waiting for a reply and resetting the limit.
Upon entering the app, users can see the most popular users on the homepage. Through the Explore button, users can search for their followed users and buy their shares. The initial price of each user's share is determined by Twitter data, and the supply of shares is limitless. The price of shares fluctuates based on market supply and demand, so the more popular a person is, the more shares are purchased, making their shares more valuable.
3. Market Status of Friend.tech
Within just about ten days since its launch, Friend.tech has continuously set new records in on-chain data, becoming a favorite on the Base network.
According to DefiLlama data, Friend.tech generated over $1.68 million in blockchain fees in the past 24 hours, successfully surpassing other well-known blockchain projects like Lido, Uniswap, and Tron, ranking only behind Ethereum.
Due to the continuous spread in the crypto community, Dune Analytics data shows that the number of independent users interacting with the application has more than doubled in the last two days, increasing from around 31,500 on August 18th to over 69,587.
The popularity of Friend.tech continues to grow, with notable figures from non-crypto fields also joining this social media DApp, including Garry Tan, Founder of Y Combinator, NBA player Grayson Allen, and professional gamer Faze Banks.
4. Ongoing Controversies Surrounding Friend.tech
Despite the continuous record-breaking performance in terms of data and the increasing community enthusiasm and network impact, questions have never stopped since Friend.tech's inception.
Firstly, in terms of data and information security, Friend.tech requires users to log in using their personal Google or Apple IDs, and they must then link to an X account to proceed. This undoubtedly involves users sharing their personal information with third parties.
Recently, Spot on Chain, a platform monitoring on-chain data, indicated that Friend.tech had issues related to data leakage via API and the ability to buy and sell shares from futures without an invitation code. In addition, Cosmos, the founder of SlowMist, stated that wallet addresses corresponding to more than 100,000 Twitter accounts associated with friend.tech were exposed.
Furthermore, the legal risks associated with its unique project model have grown as the project develops.
5. Anticipated Airdrops from friend.tech
On August 18th, the official Twitter account of friend.tech announced that the first batch of points had been airdropped to 44,000 users. Additionally, the team stated that they would distribute 100 million points over a 6-month testing phase, conducting airdrops every Friday. These points will be recorded off-chain and will have special purposes after the testing phase concludes.
Friend.tech indicates that airdrops will be based on users' activity before Thursday each week, and the criteria will be updated weekly. It is not recommended for users to employ specific methods to earn points. If issues arise, friend.tech reserves the right to modify previous points distribution.
Based on the proportion of points in the token supply and FDV, some users have predicted the value of points: If the FDV reaches $20 million and the airdropped points account for 10%, each point would be worth $0.2.
6. Conclusion
The success of Friend.tech in community marketing has validated the effectiveness of Social+Fi as an outstanding user acquisition strategy. Proper distribution of benefits and providing incentives for KOLs and retail users to promote the community are undoubtedly the fastest and most native ways of growth. However, Friend.tech is a social application software centered around the economy of fans, and its current functionality is relatively limited. Its mechanism design leans towards FOMO, as evident from the pricing model of personal influence tokens. With high expectations for airdrops, the current enthusiasm continues to rise. If the focus returns to the essence of social products and fails to truly connect fans with KOLs, the growth potential of the product remains limited and unsustainable.