$FRIEND Analysis

FriendTech is a socialfi dapp built on Base, users can buy others’ key to enter their room, it’s one of the most successful web3 dapp from the user side, has more than 900k unique addresses.This private space enables users to interact more effectively than through traditional methods like Twitter DMs. Friend.tech markets itself as "the marketplace for your friends". The nature of Friend.Tech is token-launch and speculation, also allowing users to get exclusive interactions with the room owner.

FriendTech used the PWA (Progressive Web App) development method, which is easy for both developers and users. Head to http://friend.tech via Safari on your updated iOS, add to home screen, type in your invite code, sign up, and connect your Twitter. Then bridge eth from mainnet to Base, they used Privy to generate wallet addresses for users.

If you wanna enter someone’s room, you need to own at least one key of the room. After users join Friend.tech and activate their accounts by transferring at least 0.001E, they can purchase their first key at a price of 0. The formula for the price of keys for subsequent buyers is (S^2) / 16000, where S is the total number of keys. The design of the pricing curve ensures that each entrant will increase the price, and the magnitude of the increase driven by later entrants will be higher and higher. For the price curve:

Most of the rooms will have less than 100 keys, so the price would be affordable and more users can get in, meanwhile also provide room for speculation. For each transaction made by users, the platform will charge a 10% transaction fee, with half (5% of the total) allocated to the Friend.tech team, and the other half (5%) given to the hosts as operational incentives.

Then they launched the token and the new feature Club, which is like group chat. Anyone can create a club, which are group spaces owned and moderated by keyholders. Clubs also have keys, from private chats to launching club-based tokens. Keyholders vote for the club president, who manages the club and selects moderators. All club keys are transacted using $FRIEND. When creating a club, users can choose: Club Name, Description, Price Curve (Casual, standard or exclusive), Number of keys to issue. The club price curve (At 50 members, your club key will cost):

The fee for club swaps is now 0.5% for the FT team (down from 1.5%), with the other 0.5% going to the club president. Club metrics:

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

As you see in the image I've attached, during V1 times, we only have 1 form of room, where the room owner has 100% rights on curating the content being shared in their room. Just like a bulletin board, if the room owner chooses not to reply to your message, they can.

We can go through the timeline to get a better understanding:

Aug 2023:

• Released their first product, and used the invitation system, only after getting an invitation code then you can use Friend.tech. 

• Announced the investment from paradigm

• Airdrop system: 100,000,000 points will be distributed over six month

Sep 2023:

• caused great FOMO and similar product emerging on other chains

• Improving the features but the UIUX still very poor for a long time

Nov 2023:

• working to reduce botting, identified and removed 600k accounts identified as bots

Jan 2024:

• Cooperated with Rainbow Wallet

Mar 2024:

• Announcement of tokens fully distributed to community

  

Apr 2024:

• linking a Twitter to your friendtech account becomes optional. 

May 2024:

• The friendtech app no longer requires invite codes. Friendtech launched V2 with features like Clubs and the token $FRIEND, only can swap and trade in the internal bunnyswap

• cooperated with sofamon, a sticker financialization platform.

• price drop after the cofounder Racer hints at leaving Base

Potential functionalities upgrades:

• Points feature under progress, not sure what does it mean

• may have improvement for clubs, make it easier to launch token, to work as a launchpad

• Dan from Paradigm also gave some advice: it’s more like a Key AMM than a bonding curve, and for the mechanism, can consider generating a new key everyday and sharing this revenue with holders. Other advice includes giving priority to the room owner’s Twitter followers, changing the initial buy to avoid mev bot, but the team didn’t accept nor change.

$FRIEND is the utility token of Friendtech launched on Base. Current total Supply is 94m, all distributed to the community, but we are not sure whether there will be additional issue in the future. 100% of $FRIEND tokens are in circulation.

$FRIEND LPs/farmers earn rewards in three ways:

• 1.5% in ETH/$FRIEND fees from every swap

• 12M in $FRIEND in LM rewards over 12 months

• 1.5% in $FRIEND fees from Club Key swaps

https://dune.com/whale_hunter/friend-tech-ultimate-analytics

35% of the total supply is staked in friend.tech clubs or LP.

Social + assets release is an emerging direction recently in the market, becoming more popular in the meme hype. The following projects may not be direct competitors, but can be defined in this category.

Degen:

• How it started: $Degen initially originated from the leading social protocol Farcaster, with airdrops rewarding active users in the /degen channel. With Farcaster’s Frame feature in February of this year and opening registration for the Warpcast client, there has been a surge in user numbers, resulting in increased attention for $degen. Holders can earn rewards by providing liquidity on Uniswap, participating in meme contests on Farcaster, and receiving tips. 

• Fundraising and operation: The team raised 490.5 ETH in the angel round, with Ethereum OGs and 1confirmation leading the investment. Degen has also built its own L3, with $degen as the base token.

Degen L3 metrics:

Utility: Many projects in the Farcaster ecosystem use Degen as bootstrap token. For example, perl_xyz rewards users who play games regularly with $degen, allowing users to withdraw/deposit $degen within the app or convert it to $perl. The project also received a 10 million degen from the foundation. Others include Drakulaapp (Web3 Tiktok), Alfafren etc.

Pump.fun

• Trading driven platform caused the FOMO caused by Friendtech last year, many similar products emerging on different chains and many related bots are developed. The team also made a satisfying revenue in a very short time. 

• Users can deploy a new token with simple steps and small cost (~$3), then there will be a pre launch pool, other users will buy with a bonding curve, the earlier you buy, the cheaper. When the liquidity reaches $70k, it will be deployed to Raydium and have a real AMM pool. Pump.fun charges 1% for each txn and ~2-3 sols when moving the liquidity to Raydium.

• When trading memecoins can also share your comments or livestreaming on the platform.

previously worked on Stealcam, an NFT platform focused on auctioning images. The founder Racer is the only one on social media. Small team.

Friend.tech is so popular in one time and no doubtly it has many successful features, but it seems a bit messy at present. The product and token design have many things waiting for improvement. I still bullish in the socialfi track and crypto industry itself is money with attention.