Friend.Tech can be said to be the hottest project in the crypto community recently, with transaction volume exceeding 25,633 ETH within two weeks of its launch. Later, it received a seed round investment from Paradigm, and its lock-up volume (TVL) also showed exponential growth. However, on October 4, Friend.Tech experienced a net outflow of 2,100 ETH, which was also the largest daily withdrawal amount since its launch. The single-day TVL fell by 7.8%.
Data source: Dune
Analyst Tom Wan said that the main reason for the decline in TVL came from the large investor Hanwei Chang selling 43 of his own keys, making a total profit of 140 ETH. This also caused the price of his own Key to plummet, from 3.89 ETH per Key to 2.64 ETH. This selling pressure caused the price to plummet, allowing Chang to repurchase 15 of his own Keys at a lower price. However, Friend.Techs reserves still remain at around 10,510 ETH (approximately US$17 million), which means that large investors have only taken profits, but have not withdrawn funds yet, and may re-enter the market at any time; as of the 11th, TVL has not yet returned to the level it was at 4 days ago.
On the other hand, the popularity of Friend.Tech has also led to the emergence of many similar imitation disks on various chains, including the high-profile social platform Stars Arena launched by Avalanche (Avalanche Chain), as well as HUB 3, Friendzy et al. In this article, veDAO Research Institute will sort out the current situation and development of Friend.Tech, and also introduce and analyze related imitation disks.
Friend.Tech
For the introduction and background of Friend.Tech, you can refer to previous articles of veDAO Research Institute.
Whats happening with Friend.Tech
Recently, Friend.Tech was caught in a series of SIM swapping attacks. Not only did this shake the trust of its user base, it also caused concern among the cryptocurrency community. On September 30, a user named “froggie.eth” reported to the community on X (Twitter) a SIM swap incident affecting his Friend.Tech account, resulting in the loss of over 20 ETH. After this, user Daren Broxmeyer revealed on October 3 that he suffered a SIM card swap attack and lost 22 ETH. As of October 5, a total of 234 ETH had been stolen from just 4 different Friend.Tech users.
Cryptocurrency investment company Manifold stated that Friend.Tech has potential risks. If one takes into account that one-third of Friend.Techs accounts may be associated with mobile phone numbers, then approximately $20 million may be lost due to user-targeted attacks on the Friend.Tech network. being threatened. Additionally, Manifold emphasized that the entire Friend.Tech platform is theoretically at risk due to the way the platforms security is configured, so prioritizing addressing these issues is critical.
In response to these attacks, Friend.Tech added a new feature on October 5th that allows users to change their login methods; Friend.Tech also responded to Privys two-factor authentication (2FA) password The issue of feature not activated was clarified.
The future of Friend.Tech
Friend.Techs popularity has plummeted due to a series of SIM-swapping attacks, as well as the sell-off mentioned at the beginning of the article, and many are beginning to question whether it is a hype-and-dump scam. Some users pointed out that the developers of this project have previously been involved in some controversial projects, such as Tweet DAO and Kosetto. In both cases, the project owners flooded social media with promises of more exciting news, then suddenly disappeared.
Another major concern for investors is that Friend.Tech does not have an official roadmap or white paper. Friend.Tech has not yet provided any documentation on the progress or goals of the project. The only thing users know is that the project is currently in beta release, and the developers hope to move into a broad release in six months. The Friend.Tech team did not mention if any new features are in the works.
But overall, Friend.Tech is still an excellent SocialFi project. The innovative gameplay combines social and Crypto, resulting in a huge amount of popularity and discussion, super high TVL and profitability. There is no doubt that Friend.Tech is of great significance to the SocialFi track; it can be said that Friend.Tech can conveniently and effectively implement modern There is monetization of social media brands, filling a gap in the current DeFi world.
At the same time, Friend.Tech still has a lot of room for improvement. The first is the high transaction taxes and robots that many people are complaining about. This has resulted in project developers and scientists earning most of the profits except for the top KOLs. This is also the reason why most retail investors are unwilling to participate deeply. The second point is the lack of functions. Not only has the UI been constantly complained by users since its launch, but its current social activities are limited to text and picture exchanges in Room; all kinds of innovations that homeowners come up with need to be implemented with the help of other platforms or tools, even if they are not connected in Room. Basic lottery and voting functions are not available. If SocialFi only focuses on finance and the product itself cannot retain users, then it will eventually face the risk of failure after the economic model collapses.
Imitation disk
Friend.Tech tweeted on August 29, saying, “In order to ensure that loyal users receive fair rewards during our testing period, users who turn to forks and imitation disks will automatically choose to no longer earn points and give up their existing Points. They will be able to use the application normally. The meaning of this statement is very clear, that is, users can use various imitation disks, but after using them, they will not be able to earn points rewards here at Friend.Tech. Five hours after Friend.Tech finally released this statement, its founder Racer issued an apology letter, admitting that previous remarks on restricting users from using cloned and copycat versions of apps were based on fear and zero-sum thinking.
Through this wave of operations by Friend.Tech, it can be seen that in the social field, the value of imitation disks is still very high. Even the leaders in this field will be afraid of the emergence of imitation disks; of course, those who have experienced the early prosperity of Web2 Friends, you will feel more deeply about this. After all, we have all seen how social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter finally won in the social track. So let’s take a look at some good Friend.Tech imitation disks:
Stars Arena
Stars Arena is Friend.Techs imitation of Avalanche Chain. Stars Arena changed the name Keys to Ticket. Unlike Friend.Tech, which requires an invitation code, Stars Arena only needs to bind a Twitter account to Stars Arena to trade Tickets on the platform; as long as you purchase After receiving the other partys Ticket, you can enter the other partys private chat room. This private chat room is slightly different from Friend.Tech. In Friend.Tech, if the host does not choose to reply to a member, other members cannot see each others comments, while in Stars Arena, both the host and the members comments can be seen.
In addition, a bigger change than Friend.Tech is that Stars Arena has added a public information flow function. Users can publish Twitter-style posts and receive retweets, likes, and rewards. In addition, it has adjusted the profit sharing mechanism, with 7% of transaction fees going to creators, 2% going to the platform, and 1% going to recommenders.
Data from Dune shows that Stars Arena’s daily TVL has grown significantly since October 2, reaching a peak of around $1.45 million on the 6th. Currently, Avalanche official and founder Emin Gün Sirer are involved, and other big players in Friend.tech have also entered.
However, Stars Arena suffered a major security breach on October 6. The hacker attack caused Avalanche nearly $3 million in losses. On the 9th, Stars Arena announced that it had successfully obtained the necessary funds to cover losses of US$3 million. The Stars Arena team also made it clear that they will only reactivate the smart contract after conducting a comprehensive security audit. As of press time, Stars Arena is still under maintenance.
Fan.Tech
Fan.Tech is also a SocialFi project with social value tokenization as its core, where “Keys” are called “Shares”. But unlike Friend.Tech, Fan.Techs UI/UX is smoother. You can public/private posts, view the accounts you follow on X, statistics page, and switch to dark mode. As far as the program itself is concerned, it is better than Friend. Tech is much more mature; in addition, Fan.Tech has a roadmap and white paper.
It also features Share Generation Events (SGE), a feature that introduces bidding events for new accounts to prevent bots, and a referral system that allows users to earn 1% from taxes on Shares transactions made by invitees. And one of their shares.
CipherRIP
CipherRIP used to have the domain name cipher.fan and was launched on Arbitrum. Users can buy and sell Cores, which are equivalent to Friend.Techs Keys. By using CipherRIP, users can earn points and receive a CIPHER airdrop that will be issued on October 15; the total airdrop amount is 100 million CIPHER, accounting for 10% of the total token supply. If users want to publish content on the platform, they need to hold 5 Cores, or their Core value needs to exceed 0.01 $ETH. It is worth mentioning that the project’s launch announcement was officially forwarded by Arbitrum.
After being forwarded by Arbitrum’s official tweet, CipherRIP had an influx of 14,468 new users on October 10, accounting for approximately 75.6% of the total number of current users. DeFiLlama data shows that CipherRIP captured approximately $215,000 in fees on the same day; the current CipherRIP TVL exceeds 320 ETH and continues to hit new highs.
HUB 3
HUB 3 is a social project built on the Solana chain, with roughly the same rules as Friend.Tech. The difference is that HUB 3 displays a world map in the interface. If the user registers somewhere, the corresponding location will be displayed on the map, and they can also click and interact through the map.
Conclusion
Based on the picture above, it is not difficult to see that Friend.Tech is still firmly at the top of the SocialFi track, but other high-quality imitation disks are also coming. These imitation disks have been optimized and improved in terms of on-chain selection, economic model, functional design, etc. In terms of innovation, various participants may work together to promote the maturity and prosperity of this track. Product quality will continue to improve, and users sense of gain will continue to increase.
The essence of SocialFi is still P2E. Compared with other P2E, users can obtain traffic and influence in addition to token rewards. The more essential thing is that the platform uses the value brought by KOL influence for free. Once the situation is improved, creators can reclaim the value of their influence.
We have reason to believe that this wave of enthusiasm that has not yet disappeared will bring the SocialFi track into a new stage of rapid development. It will change our social methods in new forms, reshape relationships, and become a new growth point in the encryption world.
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