SocialFi Data Comparison: friend.tech VS Farcaster, Who is the Social King?

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

As the hottest L2 network in 2024, the Base ecosystem has successively launched two major social protocols: Friend.tech and Farcaster. The former, after experiencing a surge in popularity in August last year, fell into a period of silence, but recently regained significant market attention with the launch of the FRIEND token and the V2 version, which introduced Club features; the latter, initially built on the OP ecosystem, has gradually carved out its own "social forum path" by leveraging its connection to the Base ecosystem, launching the Frame application in January 2024, and benefiting from the meme coin craze, including DEGEN.

Today, Odaily Planet Daily will guide you through an analysis of the performance of these two popular products in the SocialFi track—Friend.tech and Warpcast (with Farcaster as the underlying protocol)—from a data perspective.

1. Basic Data: User Count + Protocol Revenue

According to Dune data, Friend.tech currently has a total of 909,861 unique addresses, with protocol revenue amounting to 17,056.5 ETH (approximately $54.647 million). This data covers the period from August 2023 to early May 2024, totaling about 9 months.

https://dune.com/msilb7/friendtech-on-base-activity

According to Dune data, Farcaster currently has a total of 344,474 unique users, with protocol revenue of $1.234 million. It is worth noting that Farcaster's protocol revenue data began in early October 2023. In contrast to Friend.tech, which was explosively popular upon launch, resulting in substantial transaction fees, Farcaster's initial protocol revenue was only a few thousand dollars, indicating a significant gap.

https://dune.com/queries/3397864/5702593

2. Advanced Data: Asset Inflows + Transaction Data

After understanding the fundamentals of the two social products, we can further compare their asset inflow data and transaction volume data.

According to Dune data, Friend.tech's total asset inflow is 31,877.59 ETH (approximately $10.2 million), with a total transaction volume of 13,681,507.

https://dune.com/msilb7/friendtech-on-base-activity

Farcaster's asset inflow data is somewhat challenging to quantify. Currently, data analysis platforms like Dune do not have corresponding dashboards or accurate data. However, each registered Warpcast user must purchase $25 worth of Warp as an in-app token to join certain paid channels, with an exchange rate of approximately 1:100. Based on 381,544 unique addresses, the total asset inflow can be roughly estimated at $9.538 million. Since the Farcaster protocol supports both on-chain and off-chain operations, and related data shows that the Farcaster ecosystem has around 1.26 million posts, we will not delve too deeply into the transaction volume data for Farcaster.

https://dune.com/pixelhack/farcaster

3. High-Level Data: Token Data + Daily Active Users

Building on the previous data comparisons, perhaps the most important comparison should be between the token data and daily active user data of the two, with the former representing current market attention and depth of participation, and the latter indicating the long-term development direction and loyal fan base of the project and product.

According to Coingecko data, the current price of the Friend.tech token FRIEND is $2.67, with a circulating supply of 90.91 million tokens and a total market capitalization of $242 million.

Coingecko website screenshot

The Farcaster protocol has not issued a corresponding token, so we will use the widely used DEGEN token in the Farcaster ecosystem as a comparison.

According to Coingecko data, the current price of DEGEN is $0.02138, with a circulating supply of 36.96 billion tokens and a total market capitalization of $266 million.

Coingecko website screenshot

In terms of daily active users, according to data from TheBlock, the average daily active users of Friend.tech have decreased from nearly 80,000 in mid-October last year to around 3,000 currently (1,360 unique sellers and 1,640 unique buyers).

TheBlock statistics interface

Farcaster's daily active users, on the other hand, have shown a steady growth trend. According to Dune data, there are currently about 38,500 original creators in the Farcaster ecosystem, with a total active user count of approximately 43,000.

Farcaster daily active user data interface

It is noteworthy that Dan Romero, the founder of Farcaster, claimed in a post on the X platform that Farcaster reached a record high of 85,000 daily active users in April and achieved milestones such as "daily active users exceeding 70,000" and "monthly active users surpassing 200,000" in its first month.

Summary: Friend.tech is More Profitable, Farcaster Has More Loyal Fans

Based on the above data comparisons, we can draw the following conclusions:

• In terms of profitability, Friend.tech has achieved a higher profit ratio through higher Key and Club transaction fees, resulting in more protocol revenue;
• In terms of product lifecycle, although the Farcaster ecosystem was launched earlier than Friend.tech, it has developed later than Friend.tech in the context of the Base ecosystem's timeline. In other words, Friend.tech has a certain first-mover advantage and has already entered the V2 version of Club hype, while Farcaster mainly relies on the development of various applications and channels within the ecosystem, leading to a relatively slow product lifecycle;
• In terms of loyal fans, the number of loyal fans in the Farcaster ecosystem far exceeds that of Friend.tech, which is partly due to the higher entry barrier of Friend.tech and is also influenced by the functional differences between the two products;
• In terms of product positioning, the Farcaster ecosystem resembles internet forums like Reddit and Tieba, while Friend.tech is more akin to a paid version of knowledge-sharing platforms and text-based Clubhouse products, with the former focusing on group communication and the latter more on one-to-many club-style interaction.

In addition, while both products attribute certain speculative value to content (Cast) or Key and Club, Friend.tech's product has a stronger speculative nature and more direct positive feedback. In contrast, the Farcaster ecosystem's products lean more towards community incentives and value empowerment through member interactions. Therefore, in the long run, the Farcaster ecosystem has relatively stronger potential and user stickiness.

Thus, the title of "King of Social" may still require a longer observation period to determine a relatively clear answer.