In the past month, the daily cost was only a few hundred dollars. Friend.tech chose soft Rug

Original title: "friend.tech Soft Rug? Where is Web3 Social?"

Original author: Karen, Foreisight News

The glory of the past reflects the loneliness of today. The rise and fall of friend.tech is like a dramatic reversal, which makes people sigh.

On September 8, Beijing time, friend.tech's official Twitter account released a meaningful announcement, setting its management and ownership parameters to 0x000...000, nominally to prevent any future changes to its fees or functions, but in fact it is a complete release of control over smart contracts. Some community users interpreted this as the stagnation and end of project development.

Although friend.tech tried to appease market sentiment, emphasizing that this change would not affect the normal operation of the Web client and that the development team would not extract any fees from smart contracts or platforms. However, the spread of "friend.tech is dead" and "soft rug" on social media revealed users' concerns and disappointments about the future of friend.tech.

It is particularly noteworthy that since August, the content of friend.tech's official Twitter has become extremely monotonous and mechanical, with only the five most popular Clubs information of the day being released every day, and no other fresh content or interaction. This change not only makes people feel the fatigue and powerlessness of the project team, but perhaps it is also a precursor to the inner struggle of the friend.tech team and their determination to finally give up control of the smart contract.

The former leader is now lonely

Looking back on the past, how glorious the rise of friend.tech was. Initially, thanks to the support of Paradigm, the active participation of heavyweight KOLs, the hard-to-find design, the potential airdrop expectations, and the novel gameplay of monetizing KOL value and IP, friend.tech achieved a remarkable achievement from 0 to 100,000+ users in just two weeks, with a total of more than 910,000 users.

However, times have changed, and today's friend.tech is no longer as glorious as it used to be. The number of daily active users has dropped to single and double digits in the past two months, and the daily trading volume of Key has also dropped from the former high of 20 million US dollars to thousands of dollars today. The once prosperous scene seems to have vanished in a few months.

What is even more regrettable is that the price of FRIEND tokens has also experienced a cliff-like decline. From the high of nearly 3 US dollars in May this year to the current 0.06 US dollars, it has fallen by more than 98%, and the market value is only 5 million US dollars. Huang Licheng once spent a huge amount of money to buy FRIEND tokens, but now he is facing huge floating losses. The FRIEND he bought for $15.6 million is now only worth $570,000, with a floating loss of at least $15 million. This has also become a microcosm of the decline of friend.tech.

Looking back at the development of friend.tech, the uncertainty of the team's internal and external cooperation also laid the groundwork for its decline. From the subtle changes in the relationship with Base to the abortion of the Friendchain vision, and finally giving up the decision to migrate the FRIEND token to other chains, friend.tech's strategic vacillation further exacerbated its predicament.

At the end of May, friend.tech co-founder Racer hinted that the team's relationship with Base was unstable and intended to migrate out of the protocol. In June, friend.tech immediately announced that it would cooperate with Conduit to develop a social-specific chain based on Base, Friendchain, with the Gas token being FRIEND. Afterwards, friend.tech deleted this tweet, abandoned the Friendchain vision, and followed community feedback to decide not to migrate FRIEND to other chains.

At the same time, friend.tech closed all protocol fees for BunnySwap (built-in Swap), Clubs and v1 smart contracts, and 100% of the fees will be attributed to traders, liquidity providers and Club Chairs in the community. Previously, in friend.tech V1, a 10% fee was charged for each transaction, half of which was protocol income.

DefiLlama data shows that as of today, friend.tech has generated a total of $63.38 million in fees and $31.66 million in revenue. As shown in the figure below, friend.tech had a daily fee of more than $1 million during its heyday in October last year. After the release of V2, friend.tech's fee growth has basically stagnated, with daily fees of only a few hundred dollars in the past month.

Source: DefiLlama

Why is friend.tech silent?

The ups and downs of friend.tech are like a mirror, reflecting that Web3 social networking needs to be vigilant against bubble risks while pursuing rapid expansion.

There are many complex reasons behind the silence of friend.tech. The first is the high speculation contained in its products, which has attracted a large number of investors pursuing short-term interests to a certain extent, but it is difficult to build a stable long-term user base, making it difficult to maintain user loyalty. Secondly, in the process of exploring market positioning, friend.tech seems to have failed to accurately find a market segment that matches its core values, resulting in a disconnect between the product and user needs. In addition, the previous excessive PUA strategy has also damaged the reputation of friend.tech to a certain extent, greatly reducing the trust of users in it. In terms of team building and external cooperation, friend.tech also faces many uncertainties, which not only affects the efficiency of project execution, but also exacerbates the market's concerns about the project's prospects. More importantly, friend.tech's frequent vacillations at the strategic level have led to frequent adjustments in the project's direction, making it difficult to form effective market influence and user stickiness.

Where is Web3 social?

On the other hand, Farcaster, the leading project in the Web3 social field, has also recently encountered the dual dilemma of user growth and platform activity. In the middle of the year, Farcaster's daily posting and interaction numbers were once over 140,000. This good momentum has slowed down significantly in the past month, and DAU has fallen to about 100,000, indicating that Farcaster's growth momentum has weakened.

Source: Dune (@pixelhack)

What's more serious is that Farcaster has also encountered bottlenecks in user acquisition. Since the beginning of February, Farcaster's daily new user growth has dropped sharply from 15,366 at its peak to an average of 500 to 600 per day in the past two weeks. The change in this number not only reveals the sharp decline in the attractiveness of new users, but also reflects the severe test faced by the platform in maintaining the momentum of user growth. In addition, Meme in the Farcaster ecosystem has also suffered a heavy blow. Among them, Degen has fallen by more than 95% since it hit an all-time high in late May.

Source: Dune (@filarm)

These data not only reveal the shaken market confidence, but also indicate that the Farcaster ecosystem is experiencing unprecedented pressure and adjustment period.

On the other hand, Telegram has a more obvious advantage in the Web3 social field through the coordinated development with the TON ecosystem and the outbreak of mini-program games. If Web3 native social projects want to expand on a large scale, they need to pay more attention to accurate positioning, reducing the cost of Web2 to Web3 social migration, optimizing user experience, and enhancing user experience and trust building.

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