Original translation: Felix, PANews
Friend.Tech, a decentralized social platform based on Base, became a hot topic during the May Day holiday. On May 3, it launched version V2 and airdropped its native token FRIEND. After the airdrop was announced, it was supposed to be an airdrop feast that would bring a wave of popularity and goodwill to the project, but it caused ridicule from the crypto community. DexScreener data showed that FRIEND plummeted by nearly 98% after it went online, and once fell rapidly from around US$169 to around US$3.26. According to CMC data, it fell to as low as US$0.8 after it went online, and then climbed, and is currently reported at US$2.53. This article takes you through the ins and outs of the Friend.Tech airdrop event.
The airdrop returns are far lower than expected, and the distribution is too concentrated
After the FRIEND airdrop, some analysts criticized the distribution mechanism, claiming that creators received more tokens than retail investors. Hitesh Malviya, founder of crypto analytics platform DYOR, said the distribution was a centralized airdrop.
“Most users received 10 times less than they expected, so they didn’t even claim it because it was less than $200 for most retail investors. At the same time, very few people ended up making a lot of money, so it was a very concentrated case of an airdrop.”
The largest airdrop recipient quickly cleared out their positions, and some users were even unable to receive the airdrop.
The largest airdrop recipient on Friend.Tech sold all of its tokens within hours of the airdrop, sparking concerns about the market. Blockchain data shows that the largest whale, Murphys 1d, sold more than 55,000 FRIEND tokens a few hours after the airdrop went live, causing the price to initially drop by about 50%. The whales sell-off triggered a panic sell-off in the market, causing further declines.
During this period, some users complained about API glitches that prevented them from claiming tokens as prices dropped. Crypto trader Luke Martin said on X platform: I kept refreshing the page trying to claim it, and watched the value of my airdrop drop from 7 figures to 5 figures in 2 hours, but I couldnt claim it.
Researcher 0x Cygaar noted that the surge in traffic caused Friend.Techs backend to overload, and apparently no scaling measures were taken. The proof used to check user eligibility also failed, and there were even some tutorials for manually claiming airdrops from the contract through the browser BaseScan.
Even those who successfully received the tokens were quite complaining, as its price plummeted 46% from $2.78 to $1.49 in less than four hours. The community believes that FRIEND is not transferable except for trading on BunnySwap, and the developers only added $0.01 of liquidity are the main factors for its price to fall so quickly.
The Club feature is also questioned
Friend.Tech was originally launched in August 2023 as an invitation-only service with a reward points system. The V2 version introduces new features such as Money Club and a new points system. Money Club will provide users with an exclusive financial discussion and communication space, while the new points system is designed to reward users for their contributions and interactions on the platform.
However, the Club function has also been criticized by some users. On the one hand, in order to attract traffic to the Club function, in the airdrop design, each user can only directly receive 10% of the airdrop. To get the full amount of airdrop, you need to join the Money Club and follow 10 users on v2. The software also has some bugs. For example, some users reported that the newly created Club was not displayed . In addition, Friend.Tech did not forget to eat quietly. Ethereum investor @eric.eth pointed out that Friend.Tech v2 integrated its own exchange (RabbitRouter + BunnySwap) in the application, charging a 1.5% transaction fee.
Dune data shows that since the release of V2 on May 4, the number of clubs has reached 112,346, the total transaction volume has reached 16,899,404 FRIENDs, and the club fees have reached 252,651 FRIENDs.
It is worth mentioning that despite the “poor” performance of Friend.Tech tokens after launch, there are still whales making profits. According to Lookonchain’s monitoring on May 5, the top five buyers of FRIEND have accumulated a floating profit of US$2.89 million.
In addition, according to The Data Nerds monitoring , 3 days ago, a smart investor 0x A 26 spent $1.18 million and accumulated 732,000 FRIEND with an average entry fee of $1.61. The current unrealized profit is approximately $807,000.
Despite the controversy, Friend.Tech is still an important player in the Web3 social media field. As for whether it can continue to lead the new wave of SocialFi in the future, lets wait and see.
