From Paradigm's investment to Soft Rug, a tumultuous year for Friend.tech

Author: shushu, BlockBeats

If you had to describe Friend.Tech with a single image.

On September 8, 2024, the once-popular crypto social app Friend.Tech announced that its project management and ownership parameters have been set to the Ethereum null address 0x000…000, effectively locking the current system and preventing further changes, which means Friend.Tech has relinquished control over the smart contract and the platform is essentially closed.

Friend.Tech was created by an anonymous developer known as Racer and launched on Base on August 10, 2023. On its first day, it reached 136,000 daily active users.

On August 15, Friend.Tech announced that it would airdrop reward points to app test users. During the testing period, these points would be collected off-chain and have special uses after the official release of the app, indicating that Friend.Tech had already planted the seeds for future airdrops.

On August 19, Friend.Tech stated on social media that it had completed its seed round financing, with Paradigm participating.

On August 21, just ten days after its launch, Friend.Tech's revenue exceeded 1,000 ETH, reaching 1,165.2 ETH. The total trading volume of the protocol reached 25,633.5 ETH, with a total user market value of 10,663.3 ETH. In 24 hours, the protocol generated $1.12 million in fees, surpassing Uniswap and the Bitcoin network during the same period, second only to Ethereum and the Lido protocol.

On August 30, Friend.Tech disclosed platform data indicating that approximately 20,000 Key holders check room messages daily, with a next-day retention rate exceeding 75% and a weekly retention rate exceeding 50%. Additionally, active Key holders spend an average of over 30 minutes daily using Friend.Tech.

On September 1, Friend.Tech's daily trading volume had sharply decreased from $16 million on August 21 to about $700,000, a decline of over 95%.

From late August to early September 2023, Friend.Tech experienced a revenue low.

With the resolution of technical issues and the lifting of the trust crisis, Friend.Tech's protocol revenue began to grow again. On September 8, according to DeFiLlama data, Friend.Tech's TVL surpassed $10 million, reaching $10.35 million, setting a new high since its launch in August.

On September 14, according to Dune data, Friend.Tech's protocol fees exceeded 5,000 ETH, reaching 5,063.104 ETH (approximately $8.375 million), with a total of 4,597,737 transactions. The number of transactions yesterday reached 538,000, a historical high, with a trading amount of approximately 12,390 ETH (about $20.07 million).

On September 21, Friend.Tech launched a web version, allowing users to access Friend.Tech through their browsers.

On October 1, Dune data showed that Friend.Tech's protocol revenue reached 10,319.6 ETH, with a total trading volume of 227,030.3 ETH and a total user market value of 54,244.63 ETH.

On November 20, according to multiple community sources, there were many real friend.tech accounts mistakenly identified as bot accounts, leading to these accounts not receiving allocated points this week.

On November 26, the Twitter account of friend.tech founder Racer, @0xRacerAlt, became inaccessible.

For a period afterward, updates from Friend.Tech's official Twitter were very slow, until late February 2024 when they began to warm up for V2. During this time, the Friend.Tech team started to cash out. On December 3, the Friend.Tech protocol fee receiving address (0xdd9) transferred 7,821 ETH ($16.94 million) to Coinbase four hours prior.

Throughout March, Friend.Tech's official Twitter did not post any product updates.

On April 27, Friend.Tech officially announced on social media that it had completed data repairs and snapshots, locking the points balance.

On May 3, Friend.Tech opened the airdrop for the FRIEND token, which was temporarily priced at $3.34.

On May 4, Friend.Tech officially released version V2.

On May 18, according to Dune data, since the release of Friend.Tech V2, the number of Clubs reached 225,088, with a total transaction volume of 27,670,735 FRIEND, and Club fees amounting to 398,145 FRIEND.

With the airdrop matter settled and the V2 version officially launched, judging from Friend.Tech's official Twitter, account activity significantly increased from April to May, and there were even signs of revitalization.

On May 27, Racer, the co-founder of the Friend.Tech protocol, expressed on his social platform the intention to migrate Friend.Tech away from Base. At the same time, Racer stated that the relationship between the Friend.Tech team and Base had always been unstable, claiming to be "rejected by the Base community." As of the time of writing, Racer's X account was temporarily inaccessible. In response, Jesse Pollak, head of Coinbase's Base, acknowledged that the Friend.Tech team felt "isolated and disconnected" from certain parts of the Base and Ethereum ecosystem.

On June 11, Friend.Tech's multi-signature address transferred 2,809 ETH (worth $10.11 million) to Coinbase.

On June 20, Friend.Tech announced plans to launch Friend Chain, and subsequently announced a partnership with Conduit to develop a social-specific chain based on Base, with FRIEND as the gas token. However, Friend.Tech later deleted this tweet, indicating the abandonment of the Friendchain vision and deciding not to migrate FRIEND to other chains based on community feedback.

Throughout July, Friend.Tech's official Twitter account did not post any updates. On July 9, Friend.Tech had 5 independent buyers and 10 independent sellers, with daily active users hitting an all-time low.

Another August arrived, and Friend.Tech's official Twitter only posted one piece of content daily—the names of the five hottest clubs of the day, seemingly a form of extreme apathy after a period of madness.

This continued until September 8, when they released an announcement declaring the project of Friend.Tech to be virtually nonexistent, stating that the developers had relinquished control over the smart contract and that the platform was essentially closed.

The announcement stated that the developers had called the smart contract function to transfer control to the Ethereum null address, locking the current system and preventing further changes. "Currently, any fees from the smart contract or website no longer flow to the multi-signature wallet of the Friend.Tech development team." Although the platform appears to continue operating, the relinquishment of control has made it nearly impossible to introduce new features, and the revocation of contract ownership has prevented new teams interested in adding features to the social platform from acquiring it.

From the subtle changes in the relationship with Base to the premature demise of the Friend Chain vision, Friend.Tech has been in freefall since the update to V2 and the airdrop. Since its launch, Friend.Tech has generated approximately $89.29 million in fee revenue, of which $44.67 million was allocated to creators, with the remaining portion belonging to the Friend.Tech team. Reflecting on the project's development milestones over the past year, the unicorn that was once thriving at the same time last year has now seen its fortunes fade, leaving people in disbelief.