The current FT V2 version seems to lack some key features.

Written by: Francesco

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Introduction to friend.tech

friend.tech (FT) is one of the most successful Web3 dApps in SocialFi, achieving the highest income-to-net-deposit ratio in history, with over $2 million in revenue and over $33 million in net deposits in the first month.

This should have been an important week for FT as they launched the V2 of their product and the platform's token $FRIEND, introducing significant changes to enhance the protocol's sustainability and attractiveness, but it turns out to be its demise.

Some were optimistic about these developments, while others were pessimistic, but after today's developments, everyone is incredulous.

In this article, we will delve into the new mechanisms of FT V2, $FRIEND, explore any vulnerabilities it has experienced or is still experiencing, and discuss whether this business model is sustainable.

Let's first take a look at the challenges faced by the early version of friend.tech.

On friend.tech V1

FT is the first decentralized social application to generate income sustainably by aligning the interests of well-known cryptocurrency figures with those of retail investors.

This alignment led to FT becoming one of the projects with the largest user base growth, activity increase, and revenue increase during the bear market.

However, due to the fees charged by the platform, this model is not sustainable.

Although KOLs and FT earned substantial income, retail investors were losing money every day. Due to the 0% tax in trading, they could only profit by selling keys at a price at least 20% higher than the purchase price.

This was only possible during periods of high platform activity and inflow, which is also the main reason for the observed fluctuating behavior in the graph below.

Ultimately, fees became a barrier for many to enter the market, making FT V1 unbearable for many.

Nevertheless, FT V1 achieved several milestone goals within 6 months, which few protocols achieve throughout their entire lifecycle:

• Generated approximately $13 million in fees:

• Traded volume reached $130M (possibly the highest trading volume achieved by a SocialFi dapp):

• Distributed approximately $6 million in income to its users:

On friend.tech V2

FT V2 was released on Friday, March 3, 2024.

As part of this long-awaited update, users can finally claim their $FRIEND tokens.

However, this release seems to have fallen short of expectations, including a lack of relevant information.

This is the only official announcement on Twitter since FT was launched.

Understandably, this has left many confused about the process of claiming the airdrop.

Users can only claim 10% of their airdrop (provided they follow at least 10 people) and need to join a club to claim the remaining 90%.

However, these requirements are not clear as there are no pop-ups or guidance in the application, and in many cases, even after joining a club, users are unable to claim.

What are clubs?

Clubs are one of the main new features introduced in FT V2.

Anyone can create a new club. Clubs are defined as "group spaces" owned and managed by key holders; however, it is unclear how they will be used in the future.

Here's how clubs work:

• Key holders vote to elect the club's chairman
• The chairman manages the club and selects moderators
• All club keys are traded using $FRIEND
• Each club transaction incurs a 1.5% transaction fee, distributed to farmers and FT

We observed interesting changes in the Base Scan contract interface, such as the change in "changeBestFriend" and "changeBestFriendfee," which we can speculate will be used to allow anyone to add a best friend, potentially reducing or waiving fees when trading keys.

We can also speculate that FT will soon introduce referral fees (point 7 in the image below), and we also know that club keys are transferable (and possibly users' keys as well?).

The following club (Fight Club) is the first club represented by FT #1, and Racer is actually its president, reflected in the price of the key.

However, from the image below, he did not create the club himself.

When creating a club, users can choose the following:

1. Name
2. Description
3. Price curve (standard or exclusive)
4. How many keys to buy

Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that most of these are assumptions, as FT is expected to provide more information about Clubs and their mechanisms.

Users also need to be mindful of some elements when interacting with clubs: anyone can transfer the ownership of clubs and appoint others as chairmen.

Therefore, you must be very careful with well-known figures nominated as chairmen: they might not even be aware of their nomination.

For example, this morning we created a random club and invited Racer to join!

Please note that clubs can have the same name, so always check the FT # of the club to ensure you are purchasing the correct one.

In addition to these changes, the homepage of the Web App has also changed. New elements are now displayed, including "Farms" (LP), airdrop claiming, and rewards.

Currently, users can only claim their airdrop, create clubs, buy and sell tokens, and use them to earn rewards in the farms.

Furthermore, many have emphasized that the role of keys has not truly changed, and their utility has not expanded. The social media elements that were supposed to change the direction of the platform seem to be missing or not sufficiently impressive.

Nevertheless, we do not know if this is the final version or if new updates will be released soon.

Lastly, but equally important, many have higher expectations for the price of the $FRIEND token.

With no new use cases for keys, this may be the key to whether the airdrop is worth it and whether many will fumble to sell their $FRIEND tokens.

All these factors make it difficult to imagine the long-term sustainability and success of this model, given the current design, this may be the final version, or it may not be.

It is also worth noting that there is a delay between completing on-chain operations and reflecting them on the FT interface.

We observed a delay of approximately 3-4 hours.

Is the friend.tech model sustainable?

Many have questioned the sustainability of the FT model, and although initially overlooked due to the incredible appeal of the dApp, these criticisms have grown louder as the hype around FT gradually fades.

With FT V2 moving away from the influencer-centric model introduced in V1, the protocol aims to reduce its dependency and become more sustainable.

In fact, the dependency on influencers is a single point of failure: the value of a social network depends solely on its users. The absence of many important figures would greatly diminish the appeal of FT.

What is the value of Hsaka or Ansem if they rarely connect to the application, let alone share alpha there?

This may be one of the key reasons for the team's recent shift towards a more community-centric (i.e., degen) approach.

This is one of the key issues for FT: how do they ensure that users are incentivized and prefer their app over other applications like Twitter, Farcaster, Lens, etc.?

Despite a lot of hype following the token launch, FT has not attracted the same level of attention as the previous two waves.

Many speculate that with the release of $FRIEND, the protocol will gradually attract more attention. However, the current metrics are far from meeting expectations.

Could this be another case of Sell the news ?

Or will the long-awaited V2 transform friend.tech into a leading social application and attract new user groups?

The current FT V2 version seems to lack some key features that have been removed from the application.

For these reasons, it can be speculated that this is not the complete version of FT 2, and there may be an upcoming update.

We want to conclude this article with a reflection: Is this all that FT can develop after 8 months of crazy funding, resources, and hype? Or is this another brilliant strategy by the team to collect all the negative feedback, iterate, and release the final version of the application?

From the current situation, it seems to be the latter, and the current state of FriendTech V2 is worth pondering.

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