From Paradigm investment to Soft Rug, a record of Friend.Tech's exciting year | Web3 autopsy report

If you use a picture to describe Friend.Tech.

On September 8, 2024, Friend.Tech, a popular crypto social app, announced that the project management and ownership parameters have been set to an empty Ethereum address of 0x000...000, which means that the current system has been locked to prevent further changes, which means that Friend.Tech has given up control of the smart contract and the platform has basically closed.

Friend.Tech was created by an anonymous developer Racer and launched on Base on August 10, 2023. On the first day of its launch, the number of daily active users reached 136,000.

On August 15, Friend.Tech announced that it would airdrop bonus points to App test users. During the test, these points will be collected off-chain and have special uses after the official release of the application. Friend.Tech planted the seeds of airdrops from the beginning.

On August 19, Friend.Tech announced on social platforms that it had completed its seed round of financing, with Paradigm participating.

On August 21, ten days after the launch, Friend.Tech's revenue exceeded 1000 ETH, reaching 1165.2 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 US dollars in protocol fees were generated in 24 hours, exceeding Uniswap and Bitcoin networks in the same period, and second only to Ethereum and Lido protocols.

On August 30, Friend.Tech disclosed platform data that about 20,000 Key holders check the room and read messages every day, with a retention rate of more than 75% on the next day and a weekly retention rate of more than 50%. In addition, active Key holders use Friend.Tech for an average of more than 30 minutes a day.

On September 1, Friend.Tech's daily trading volume dropped sharply from $16 million on August 21 to about $700,000, a drop of more than 95%.

Friend.Tech's revenue trough period from the end of August to the beginning of September 2023

With the technical problems fixed and the trust crisis of Friend.Tech resolved, its protocol revenue has grown again. On September 8, according to DeFiLlama data, Friend.Tech TVL exceeded $10 million, reaching $10.35 million. It hit a new high since its launch in August this year.

On September 14, according to Dune data information, Friend.Tech 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. The number of transactions yesterday 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, and users can use Friend.Tech in the browser.

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 misjudged as robot accounts, resulting in these accounts not being allocated points this week.

On November 26, the Twitter account @0xRacerAlt of friend.tech founder Racer could no longer be displayed.

For a period of time thereafter, the official Friend.Tech account was updated very slowly until the end of February 2024 to warm up V2. During this period, the Friend.Tech team began to cash out. On December 3, the Friend.Tech protocol fee receiving address (0xdd9) 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.tech's coin issuance process? "

On May 3, Friend.Tech opened the airdrop token FRIEND to claim, and FRIEND was temporarily reported 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 FRIEND, and the club fee has reached 398,145 FRIEND.

The airdrop has been settled, and the V2 version has been officially launched. Judging from the official Friend.Tech push, the account activity has increased significantly from April to May, and there will even be 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 posted by Racer 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 then officially announced that it would cooperate with Conduit to develop a social-specific chain Friendchain based on Base, with the Gas token being FRIEND. But then Friend.Tech deleted the tweet, which meant that 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.Tech’s official Twitter account did not post any updates. On July 9, Friend.Tech had 5 independent buyers and 10 independent sellers, and the number of daily active users hit a record low.

It was August again, and the Friend.Tech official Twitter account only posted one piece of content every day - the names of the five popular clubs of the day, which seemed to be a kind of slacking behavior after extreme madness.

It lasted until September 8, when the announcement was released that the Friend.Tech project was dead in name only, saying that the Friend.Tech developers had given up control of the smart contract and the platform had basically been shut down.

The announcement stated that the developer called the 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 interested in adding 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 US$89.29 million in fee income, of which US$44.67 million was allocated to creators and the remainder belongs to the Friend.tech team. Looking back at the project development nodes this year, the unicorns that were once in their heyday at the same time last year are now gone, which is a pity.

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