Decentralized social media app Friend.Tech making headlines after reportedly executing 100,000 trades in volume in a single day – believed to have eclipsed even OpenSea.
What is Friend.Tech?
One of the most popular apps on Base, Friend.Tech symbolizes crypto personalities by allowing users to buy and sell “stocks” of people, which fluctuate according to supply and demand. Ownership of these “shares” then grants a user access to a private chat with that person
It served as one of the first players to venture into decentralized social media, while thanks to its @TweetDAO project – an NFT that allowed access to posts from a shared Twitter account.
The developer, who bears the name @0xRacerAltwas also the main developer of @TweetDAO.
“The more trading and speculation on you, the more money you make,” tweeted Coinbase’s Senior Staff Software Engineer Yuga Cohler (@yuga.eth).
How to sign up
Currently, the social media app is in beta, by invitation only through referral codes that Cohler generously shared on X.
Cohler also shared that due to the app’s rising popularity, it barely works due to the “excessive traffic”, noting that the app’s data latency exceeds 10 seconds.
The app has been so popular since its inception that it barely works and crumbles under excessive traffic.
Most screens usually don’t load. Data latency is often >10s.
And yet the user growth is unstoppable. What explains this? pic.twitter.com/3TnIwuVUfC
— yuga.eth
(@yugacohler) August 11, 2023
“The more referrals, the more ‘points’ you receive each Friday,” Cohler wrote.
https://t.co/L11mNJZgY3 is currently in beta, so invite only. The more referrals, the more “points” you receive every Friday.
That “Airdrop” is a tab in itself speaks to the deep understanding of the crypto community development team.
CT likes aidrops. pic.twitter.com/o21rhjh7un
— yuga.eth
One user, who goes by the name of @function0nZer0compiled a spreadsheet that outlines what it believes is the pricing model for Friend.Tech, but this has not been confirmed.
Will this frenzy last?
While Friend.Tech can be compared to previous attempts by apps like BitClout and DeSo Protocol, the community seems to think this implementation is very different, due to its “technical choices” and “go-to-market” strategy.
Whether this will last beyond the current hype phase remains to be seen. However, it does provide an interesting (and bizarre) perspective on judging one’s measured self-worth in the crypto space.
