If you use a picture to describe Friend.Tech.
On September 8, 2024, Friend.Tech, a once popular crypto social application, announced that the project management and ownership parameters have been set to an Ethereum empty address of 0x000...000, which means that the current system has been locked and further changes have been prevented, which means that Friend.Tech has given up control of the smart contract and the platform has been basically closed.
Friend.Tech was created by an anonymous developer named Racer and launched on Base on August 10, 2023. On the first day of its launch, it had 136,000 daily active users.
On August 15, Friend.Tech announced that it would airdrop bonus points to App test users. During the test period, these points will be collected off-chain and will have special uses after the official release of the application. Friend.Tech has planted the seeds of airdrops from the beginning.
On August 19, Friend.Tech announced on social media that it had completed its seed round of financing, with Paradigm participating in the investment.
On August 21, ten days after its launch, Friend.Tech’s revenue exceeded 1,000 ETH, reaching 1,165.2 ETH. The total transaction volume of the protocol reached 25,633.5 ETH, and the total market value of users was 10,663.3 ETH. A total of $1.12 million in protocol fees was generated in 24 hours, exceeding Uniswap and Bitcoin network in the same period, and second only to Ethereum and Lido protocols.
On August 30, Friend.Tech disclosed platform data that approximately 20,000 Key holders check the room and read messages every day, with a next-day retention rate of over 75% and a weekly retention rate of over 50%. In addition, active Key holders spend an average of more than 30 minutes using Friend.Tech every day.
As of September 1, Friend.Tech’s daily trading volume had dropped sharply from $16 million on August 21 to approximately $700,000, a drop of more than 95%.
Friend.Tech’s revenue is at its lowest point from late August to early September 2023
As the technical problems were fixed and the trust crisis of Friend.Tech was resolved, its protocol revenue grew again. On September 8, according to DeFiLlama data, Friend.Tech TVL exceeded 10 million US dollars, reaching 10.35 million US dollars, setting a new high since its launch in August this year.
On September 14, according to Dune data, Friend.Techs protocol fees exceeded 5,000 ETH, reaching 5,063.104 ETH (worth approximately $8.375 million), and its cumulative number of transactions reached 4,597,737. Yesterday, the number of transactions reached 538,000, a record high, with a transaction amount of approximately 12,390 ETH (approximately $20.07 million).
On September 21, Friend.Tech launched a web version, allowing users to use Friend.Tech in their browsers.
On October 1, Dune data showed that the Friend.Tech protocol revenue reached 10,319.6 ETH, the total transaction volume reached 227,030.3 ETH, and the total market value of users was 54,244.63 ETH.
On November 20, according to multiple community news, there are currently a large number of friend.tech real accounts that have been misidentified as robot accounts, resulting in these accounts not being allocated points this week.
On November 26, the Twitter account @0x RacerAlt of friend.tech founder Racer could no longer be displayed.
For a period of time thereafter, the official Friend.Tech updates were very slow until the end of February 2024 when V2 was preheated. During this period, the Friend.Tech team began to cash out. On December 3, the Friend.Tech protocol fee receiving address (0x dd 9) transferred 7,821 ETH (US$16.94 million) to Coinbase 4 hours ago.
Throughout March, there were no product updates on Friend.Tech’s official Twitter account.
On April 27, Friend.Tech officials posted on social media that data repair and snapshots had been completed and the points balance had been locked.
Related reading: How messy is friend.techs coin issuance process?
On May 3, Friend.Tech opened the airdrop token FRIEND for claiming, and FRIEND is currently 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 has reached 225,088, the total transaction volume has reached 27,670,735 FRIENDs, and the Club fees have reached 398,145 FRIENDs.
The airdrop issue has been settled, and the V2 version has been officially launched. Judging from the official Twitter account of Friend.Tech, its account activity has increased significantly from April to May, and it has even started to do some activities.
Related reading: Only rich people can use FT, Friend.tech starts to take the black and red route
On May 27, Racer, co-founder of the Friend.Tech protocol, expressed his intention to migrate Friend.Tech from Base on his social platform. At the same time, Racer said that the relationship between the Friend.Tech team and Base has been unstable, and said that it was rejected by the Base community. As of press time, the X account that Racer posted is temporarily inaccessible. In response, Jesse Pollak, head of Base at Coinbase, admitted that the Friend.Tech team felt isolated and disconnected from Base and some parts of the 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 said it was preparing to launch Friend Chain, and later announced that it would work with Conduit to develop a Base-based social chain Friendchain, with the Gas token being FRIEND. But then Friend.Tech deleted the tweet, meaning it had given up on the Friendchain vision and decided not to migrate FRIEND to other chains in accordance with community feedback.
Throughout July, Friend.Techs official Twitter account did not post any updates. On July 9, Friend.Tech had 5 unique buyers and 10 unique sellers, and the number of daily active users hit a record low.
It’s August again, and the official Twitter account of Friend.Tech only releases one piece of content every day - the names of the five hot clubs of the day, which seems to be a kind of tanking behavior after an extreme frenzy.
This continued until September 8, when an announcement was released declaring the Friend.Tech project to be dead in name only, stating that Friend.Tech developers had given up control of the smart contracts and the platform had been basically shut down.
The announcement stated that the developer called a smart contract function to transfer control to an empty address on Ethereum, 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 to operate, the relinquishment of control makes it almost impossible to introduce new features, and the revocation of contract ownership prevents new teams that intend to add features to the social platform from acquiring the platform.
From the subtle changes in its relationship with Base to the abortion of the Friend Chain vision, Friend.Tech has been crashing since the update of V2 and the release of the airdrop. Since its launch, Friend.tech has generated a total of approximately $89.29 million in fees, of which $44.67 million was allocated to creators and the rest belongs to the Friend.tech team. Looking back at the project development nodes this year, the unicorn that was once in its heyday at the same time last year is now gone, which is a pity.
