friendtech

Crypto degens ‘hungry’ for next big SocialFi breakthrough — K33 Research

May 9, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Friend.tech clone Stars Arena drives surge of activity on Avalanche

October 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The price of AVAX has surged more than 8% amid heightened network activity brought about by Friend.tech look-alike Stars Arena.

Decentralized social media (DeSo) application Stars Arena has caused a major uptick in activity on Avalanche’s C-chain network.

As network activity increased, so did the price of the network’s native AVAX (AVAX) token, which has gained more than 8% in the last 24 hours.

Launched in late September, the Friend.tech-inspired Stars Arena has seen the total number of daily transactions on the Avalanche C-chain — the blockchain component specifically designed for running smart contracts on Avalanche — grow by more than 186% over the past two days.

*Total Avalanche C-chain network activity spiked 186% from Oct. 1. Source: Snowtrace.io*

The Stars Arena application has grown rapidly as well, with more than 10,000 unique active wallets on the platform. Over the course of the past 2 days, the platform has witnessed more than $3.26 million in total trading volume and a little over 462,000 transactions, according to data from DappRadar.

*Stars Arena has grown rapidly since its launch in late-September. Source: DappRadar*

Meanwhile, data from DefiLlama shows that the platform has exceeded $1 million in total value locked (TVL). This however, still pales in comparison to Friend.tech, which commands some $44.27 million in TVL.

Like Friend.tech, Star Arena lets users link their Twitter accounts to the platform. Users then use the AVAX token to purchase “tickets” of other users, with a small cut of fees being paid to the platform itself and the users when tickets are bought and sold.

While purchasing a users’ ticket provides users with access to a private chat — unlike Friend.tech, Stars Arena features a public feed, so users can follow others without needing to front up large sums of money.

Pseudonymous X user Wale.swoosh described Stars Arena as “superior to Friend.tech in a lot of ways” — with its public feed feature allowing users to be more social than they would on the Base-based DeSo app.

I've capitulated in creating a Stars Arena account after seeing it all over my timeline.

Won't shill my own ref link, but a few thoughts:

Stars Arena is superior to Friendtech in a lot of ways and solves one of the main problems I had with FT.

There is a public feed, so people… pic.twitter.com/S9KzPp3hqC
— wale.swoosh (@waleswoosh) October 4, 2023

Still, Wale.swoosh and a number of others users across X noted that that the application was still quite buggy, with chats being “very laggy” and drew attention to the lack of information on the team behind the application.

Stars Arena is the latest app to join a growing roster of social finance platforms such as Alpha on the Bitcoin network, Friendzy on Solana and PostTech on Arbitrum. Despite the surge in similar DeSo apps, Friend.tech remains the market leader, with more than $293 million monthly trading volume, outpacing the next-closest app PostTech, by more than $283 million.

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OnlyFans, Patreon models turn to Web3 amid payment and censorship fears

September 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Patreon creators had difficulties getting paid in August, while OnlyFans once tried to ban porn on the platform, forcing creators to look at alternatives, including Web3.

Adult content creators have continued to shift towards decentralized versions of OnlyFans and Patreon, after recent payment difficulties and the ever-present threat of being de-platformed.

Leon Lee, founder and CEO of Only1 — a decentralized version of OnlyFans — tells Cointelegraph there has been a recent power shift from intermediaries to content creators, thanks to Web3.

“The role of intermediaries are diminishing while the role and earnings of creators are increasing,” said Lee.

In August, creators on Patreon reported having difficulties withdrawing their earnings from the platform as payments were being flagged as fraudulent by banks.

I told the credit card company the charge was valid, fine. Patreon sent an email saying "click here to update your payment" and that link goes to a 404 error. My list of supported creators is gone, I have to try to remember who I was supporting - there is nothing on the site 2/
— Jason Pargin, author of John Dies at the End, etc (@JasonKPargin) August 2, 2023

Many content creators also haven’t likely forgotten when OnlyFans tried to ban sexually explicit content in 2021, only to reverse the decision days later.

Speaking to this, Lee argues that creators will always be at risk of being deplatformed as long as they stay on centralized platforms using traditional payment rails.

“Creators are still at risk of being deplatformed and are not realizing their full earning potential.”

Only1 was launched on the Solana blockchain in March 2023 — backed by Animoca Brands. However, the platform is just one out of many startups looking to capture the magic of adult subscription platforms with a decentralized crypto twist.

1/ Introducing the Creator Economy 4.0

Traditional creator subscription platforms fell short when it comes to payments, incentives and censorship. This is all about to change, starting here on @solana.

Read on pic.twitter.com/TABSvzO1HX
— Only1 (@JoinOnly1) August 22, 2023

In 2022, OnlyFans model Allie Rae created a crypto-powered adult content platform WetSpace, as an alternative to OnlyFans.

Rae told Cointelegraph in December 2022 that she created the platform to circumvent the payment pressures that creators on platforms like OnlyFans were receiving from banks:

“I started to figure out that the banks really were largely in part the driving force behind some of those decisions that platforms were having to make. And so that naturally led to me: How do you get rid of the banks? And crypto came out like a knight in shining armor.”

More recently, creators on OnlyFans started flocking to Friend.tech, a new decentralized social media platform built on Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base.

gm web3. im shaking rn officially 1 / 292 FT girl@friendtech when merch? i'll rock it. pic.twitter.com/Qm84AajCWt
— gracie♡ (@ilovegraciexo) September 4, 2023

Lee believes a mass migration event will happen when more creators realize they don’t want to be shackled by censorship rules imposed by a centralized intermediary.

“Creators are already waking up to the fact and are becoming less dependent on intermediaries to monetize,” Lee said.

He acknowledged that TV producers, advertisers and brands will maintain a market share in the creator economy, but said a true peer-to-peer payment infrastructure like blockchain is the “next logical step” for creators:

“By removing the dependency on traditional payment processors, a web3 platform and its community can have full autonomy over the types of content allowed,” he said, adding:

Since the OnlyFans adult content censorship, creators have been creating ‘backup accounts’ on different platforms due to such deplatform risk.”

Proof of Peach, SEXN and Keyhole are three other adult entertainment platforms working in the Web3 space.

Lee believes more creators will eventually flock to decentralized platforms that provide them with “full autonomy” over their content and full ownership rights to the money they make:

“It is an inevitable future where there will no longer be any intermediaries between fans and creators — this is an obvious but unrealized potential of blockchain technology.”

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Friend.tech TVL tops $20M weeks after being declared ‘dead’

September 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Friend.tech TVL tops M weeks after being declared ‘dead’

Coin Telegraph

User activity on friend.tech has witnessed a major resurgence after briefly fizzling last week.

Decentralized social media platform friend.tech has seen a sudden surge in total value locked (TVL), doubling to reach more than $20 million within the last four days.

Only two weeks ago, critics declared the platform “dead” after activity on the app looked to be fizzling out.

*Total value locked and fees on Friend.tech since Aug. 10. Source: DeFiLlama*

However, activity on Friend.tech has witnessed a significant resurgence over the last few days, with the app witnessing $12.3 million in daily trading volume — the third-highest ever — on Sept. 9, according to data from Dune Analytics.

*Trading volume and number of traders on Friend.tech since inception. Source: Dune Analytics*

As the pseudonymous account TylerDidIt pointed out, the Sept. 9 trading volume on Friend.tech eclipsed that of OpenSea, outperforming the NFT platform by more than $3 million on the day.

FriendTech trading volume was $12.3M yesterday.

Total NFT trading volume on ETH was just $9.15M. pic.twitter.com/CbqVYqP5PQ
— TylerD ‍♂️ (@Tyler_Did_It) September 10, 2023

While there’s no apparent reason why the platform saw such a surge, many crypto industry heavyweights shared some reasoning for its resurrection.

Prominent trader Hsaka jested that TVL had doubled since users realized that Friend.tech chats were “just yield farms rebranded” — a comment that refers to the potential gain from the 5% fee earned when users buy or sell someone’s “key.”

Another potential reason behind the resurgence of activity on Friend.tech may have something to do with the growing number of non-crypto figures that have joined the platform in recent weeks, including a number of prominent YouTubers and OnlyFans creators.

PancakesBrah, the pseudonymous account in charge of growth and business development at Friend.tech said this hammers home the point that the platform “isn’t an app for just crypto bros.”

I love to see stuff like this bro, @sleepdiplomat just joined, which hammers home the point some people don’t get, this isn’t an app for just crypto bros, every vertical can find value on friend tech, everyone bro pic.twitter.com/c7EpuGQtDt
— Pancakesbrah (actually Based) (@Pancakesbrah) September 10, 2023

Additionally, the app has shipped a number of updates that have offered improvements to user experience and functionality.

Initially plagued by bugs and various technical errors, the app has added a series of new features including the ability to upload photos, credit-card-enabled purchase options and new sections to view different types of activity.

Friend.tech launched on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base on Aug. 11, and generated a staggering $5.9 million in fees by its 10th day.

Shortly afterwards however, user activity stalled — daily fees plummeted 87% and transaction volume fell 90% over the course of the next week, causing some to prematurely declare the platform “dead.”

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Friend.tech threatens to punish users if they use copycat apps

August 29, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Friend.tech warned users who choose to jump ship to “forks and copies” will see their existing points forfeited.

Crypto’s newest decentralized social media (DeSo) app friend.tech has been met with intense criticism over a decision to punish users who opt in to forks or copycat versions of its tokenized social media platform.

“To make sure loyal users are rewarded fairly during our beta, users moving to forks and copies will automatically opt out of earning Points and forfeit existing points,” wrote the official friend.tech X account in an Aug. 28 tweet.

We expect @friendtech clones and other types of copies will emerge.

To make sure loyal users are rewarded fairly during our beta, users moving to forks and copies will automatically opt out of earning Points and forfeit existing points. They will be able to use the app normally pic.twitter.com/C1rTEQQr17
— friend.tech (@friendtech) August 28, 2023

While Friend.tech did not make mention to any specific competitors, and number of X users in the reply pointed to a new DeSo or “SocialFi” application called Shares which is scheduled to go live to public beta on Aug. 31.

Shares #roadmap for the following week.

We'll be sharing daily dev logs on Medium about updates. We started building the $SHARES platform's backend a couple of weeks ago, and started with our frontend this weekend - so far, it's been a huge progress! pic.twitter.com/oLEYMlhIcF
— shares.finance (@SharesFinance) August 21, 2023

Friend.tech has been airdropping “reward points” to its beta testers every week, which will total a distribution of 100 million points over 6 months.

The team has not yet shared what the points will be ultimately used for, only mentioning on Aug. 15 it “will have a special purpose when the app enters official release status.”

We just did our first Friday Points Airdrop to 44k users.

Some reminders:
- 100M points will be distributed during the six month beta period
- Airdrops happen on Fridays
- Points are recorded off-chain
- Points will have a special purpose once the beta period ends
— friend.tech (@friendtech) August 18, 2023

Some expect it to translate to tokens to friend.tech governance, while others believe it could have some financial significance for users. Others believe that due to the seed round investment from Paradigm, there will likely be a friend.tech native token airdrop in the future.

Friend.tech’s announcement did not go down well with members of the crypto community.

Within the first hour of the announcement being posted — it attracted hundreds of negative comments and reposts that derided the app for its anti-competitive move.

*Another reaction from an X user over the recent announcement. Source: X (Twitter)*

“Threatening / penalizing users for trialing other platforms is completely against everything this industry stands for,” wrote pseudonymous trader CryptoKaleo in response to the announcement.

“This is a prime example of how not to handle competition in Web3 lol — excited to read the apology in a few hours” said another.

The announcement comes less than three weeks after its public launch of Aug. 11. Meanwhile, Friend.tech has seen a drop in key metrics such as activity, inflows and volume over the past few days.

At the time of publication transactions on Friend.tech have declined more than 90% from its peak of nearly 525,000 transactions on Aug. 21, with less than 50,000 cumulative transactions on Aug. 28, according to data from Dune Analytics.

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Friend.tech pronounced ‘dead’ after activity and fees tank

August 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Buyers, sellers, inflows and transactions have all taken significant dives on the Friend.tech platform after its launch just over two weeks ago, prompting some critics to herald its death.

Less than three weeks after its launch, the decentralized social network Friend.tech has already been declared "dead" by critics, following a recent drop in key metrics such as activity, inflows and volume.

Friend.tech had a buzzy beta version launch on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base on Aug. 11. A week later, its fees surpassed $1 million in 24 hours on Aug. 19 outshining Uniswap and the Bitcoin network.

However, its fees have since cratered. Daily fees peaked at $1.7 million on Aug. 21, but dropped over 87% to around $215,000 on Aug. 26 according to DefiLlama.

Transactions on Friend.tech also declined over 90% from the nearly 525,000 peak on Aug. 21 with just over 51,000 transactions on Aug. 27, Dune Analytics data complied by Crypto Koryo shows, leading many on X (Twitter) post condolences for the network.

RIP Friendtech

August 2023-August 2023 pic.twitter.com/Fb0bh23Fyo
— Beanie (@beaniemaxi) August 26, 2023

Friend.tech is centered on buying and selling “keys” that enable the buyer to send private messages to the seller, with the platform reportedly taking a 5% cut.

It's attracted crypto and non-crypto influencers including UpOnly podcast host Cobie, YouTuber Faze Banks and Russian protest group Pussy Riot.

In an Aug. 27 X post, Coinbase payments risk manager Lisandro Rodriguez opined that the platform is "dead," due mainly to "greed and poor execution."

Friend tech is dead because of greed and poor execution. We can see that after the initial influencer pump volume has fallen off a cliff. Let's dig into how this failure came to be pic.twitter.com/WDQncTQJ21
— Lisandro (@TheRealLisandro) August 27, 2023

Alongside the fee decline, buyers and sellers have also tanked, with Aug. 27 seeing around 10,000 buyers and 7,800 sellers compared to the Aug. 21 peak of over 58,000 buyers and 27,000 sellers, per Dune data.

*Friend.tech buyers (green) and sellers (orange) have both steadily declined since the peak on Aug. 21. Source: Dune*

Dune shows inflows have also taken a dive from the Aug. 21 high of $16.8 million with Friend.tech seeing around $1.6 million on Aug. 27 — a nearly 90.5% decrease.

*Protocol inflows peaked on Aug. 21 but have since trended down. Source: Dune*

Before the decline over the past week, some community members had already shared their bearish predictions for the platform.

Last week, crypto commentator Yazan told Cointelegraph of factors that led him to believe Friend.tech had between six to eight weeks before it would see a decline in user key prices and activity.

Yazan said the user key price increases were unsustainable and questioned why so many would pay upwards of 1 Ether (ETH) “to be able to see a private chat.”

The platform has drawn parallels to the 2021 DeSo app BitCloud with pseudonymous Web3 marketer Legendary saying he believes Friend.tech “will collapse as BitClout did.”

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Friend.tech denies report that database of over 100K users was ‘leaked’

August 22, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Friend.tech has hit back at a report which suggested that its API “leaked” personal data of its users.

The team behind the viral decentralized social media platform friend.tech has refuted a report which claimed that the personal information of more than 100,000 of its users was “leaked.”

The now-amended report, first posted by The Block, suggested that data posted by Banteg, a pseudonymous developer for Yearn Finance, was “leaked” information.

The friend.tech team however clarified that the information came from scraping its public API.

“It’s like saying someone hacked you by looking at your public Twitter feed,” the official friend.tech account argued.

This is just someone scraping our public API that shows the association between public wallet addresses and public Twitter usernames.

It’s like saying someone hacked you by looking at your public Twitter feed.

Irresponsible reporting from @TheBlock_ and @vishal4c https://t.co/GIXOWazqBk
— friend.tech (@friendtech) August 21, 2023

The post also received input from X’s (formerly known as Twitter) Community Notes contributors.

“The underlying data is public and anybody can work it out reading a block explorer: if you buy a share, 5% goes to the creator's wallet and he will have needed to fund his wallet. The database only scraps that public info,” read the community note.

Banteg originally published a repository of the publicly-available scraped data, containing details of users on the friend.tech platform on GitHub.

101,183 people has given friend tech access to posting as them, leaked db indicateshttps://t.co/yYYDqzUoON
— banteg (@bantg) August 21, 2023

This data included wallet addresses on Base, linked to the corresponding Twitter usernames for more than 101,000 users.

“101,183 people have given friend.tech access to post as them, leaked db (database) indicates,” Banteg wrote.

Banteg also gave criticism to the inaccurate interpretation of their initial post.

Meanwhile, X users also joined in to poke fun at the situation, with one user Satsdart posting a link to the Ethereum block explorer, humorously claiming that he had discovered “a leaked database showing ALL transactions on eth.”

i just found a leaked database showing ALL transactions on eth look guys https://t.co/4rrC6sBYJM
— satsdart (@satsdart) August 21, 2023

Notably, Banteg’s release of the data followed a post from blockchain analytics service Spot On Chain which found that friend.tech’s API revealed specific sets of information not immediately available to everyday users of the app.

2. The API of @friendtech also leaks the information

You can check the wallet generated by FriendTech by this API:https://t.co/uqb7V0FxLi

Just replace "0x317931c6b64f6058f688c7d62e84e1491a319dff" with the address you see on the contract. pic.twitter.com/mGrRax4Jd6
— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) August 21, 2023

The most prominent example was that wallets created by certain users can be viewed through the API.

When asked how this information could be used, Spot On Chain said it could be used to game the system by allowing bots to near-immediately purchase shares of big accounts as soon as they signed up to friend.tech.

“A lot of bots have already taken advantage of this, it monitors the contract, finds the big KOL, and buys shares before others,” wrote Spot On Chain.

Since its beta launch on Aug. 11 friend.tech has seen its users engage in over 934,000 unique transactions and trade a staggering volume of 34,320 Ether (ETH) or $57,101,116 at current prices.

Magazine: Blockchain games aren’t really decentralized… but that’s about to change

Friend.tech hype unsustainable? Critics give it only months to live

August 21, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Most crypto industry heavyweights have been bullish about the new decentralized social media app friend.tech, but some critics warn it's getting too hot too quickly.

Friend.tech, a new decentralized social media (DeSo) app has rapidly become one of the hottest new things in crypto, with over 64,000 new users and more than 24,000 ETH in trading volume since its beta version launch of Aug. 11.

While many crypto industry heavyweights have praised the app for bringing thousands of people on-chain and inspiring sign-ups from even non-crypto figures — such as gaming YouTuber Faze Banks and Russian protest group Pussy Riot — some have warned it's at risk of burning out.

Built on Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base, friend.tech is a platform that allows users to purchase shares of their friends and influencers, which in turn grants them access to a private chat with that user.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, crypto commentator Yazan pointed out a number of troubling factors that led him to believe the app has between six and eight weeks before both share prices and general activity begin to nosedive.

Let me tell you one thing.

Something isn’t right about @friendtech.

Creators making money from a group chat that doesn’t even work when you can’t even reply directly to people?

The way pricing works is ridiculous and can be easily taken advantage of.

Pumps and dumps. pic.twitter.com/TJqcktEM6P
— Yazan (@YazanXBT) August 20, 2023

Yazan argued there has been an unsustainable rate at which share prices have increased.

“The fucked up market making that guarantees that the app makes the most money along with creators — the price goes up too fast,” he said.

“How come there’s 100 holders and the price is 1 ETH — 1 ETH to be able to see a private chat?”

According to pseudonymous software engineer Cygaar in an Aug. 20 X thread, the price of someone's shares on friend.tech is proportional to the square of the outstanding supply. As the supply increases, the price increases exponentially.

It looks daunting, so let's simplify it. Let's assume that you only want to buy/sell a single share (amount = 1). This is also known as the spot price.

Using our middle school algebra skills, we can expand out the function and we'll get:

price = supply^2 / 16000
— cygaar (@0xCygaar) August 19, 2023

Drawing parallels to BitClout — a predecessor DeSo app from 2021 — pseudonymous Web3 marketer Legendary shared his bearish prediction on the longevity of Friend.tech.

“Absolutely not. I think the platform will collapse as BitClout did. We are in a bear market, and there's nothing to do. Everyone jumps on an opportunity to make money, but I think the platform will be done within the next weeks to months,” he wrote.

The bull case for friend.tech

Others however, shared a far more positive outlook on the new decentralized social media platform, praising it for its novel developments in UX for crypto applications — something that crypto app developers have long struggled to get right.

David Phelps, cofounder of Jokerace and EcoDAO, described Friend.tech’s UX as the “greatest crypto has seen,” pointing to three main factors as to why the app was such a significant breakthrough for crypto.

Firstly, the app doesn’t require users to download via an app store account, which points more strongly to the idea of decentralization. Secondly, it bridges the funds to the app automatically, reducing the need for convoluted transactions.

Finally, the app allows users to deposit their ETH once and then buy and sell shares without ever having to sign a transaction again. The constant need to verify transactions via Metamask signatures has been a major criticism of many DApps in the crypto space.

Regardless of the varied predictions concerning the app's future success or failure, there’s no denying that it has taken crypto by storm.

On Aug. 19, Friendtech announced that it had received seed round funding from crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, sparking a wave of speculation over a future airdrop and potential token launch.

Earlier this year, we partnered with @paradigm to build tools for new online social interactions.

We're grateful for the community's warm reception and excited to continue growing with you all pic.twitter.com/yINDMXkpuZ
— friend.tech (@friendtech) August 18, 2023

According to data from DefiLlama, Friend.tech has generated $1.42 million in fees in the last 24 hours, and $4.2 million since its public launch.

*Total Friend.tech fees and revenue since launch. Source: DeFiLlama*

At the time of publication, the total revenue for the project stands at $1.88 million, and has witnessed over 724,000 transactions from more than 64,500 unique traders.

Magazine: Blockchain games aren’t really decentralized… but that’s about to change

The bull case for friend.tech

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