Original author: Encryption researcher Ann
Original compilation: Baize Research Institute
Theres nothing better than waking up in the morning with a new wallet and joining the hype on friend.tech, a Web3 social app.
The current discussion on friend.tech is all hype. Although it has brought the Base ecosystem into flames, I dont want to experience it. However, I ended up compromising and using it in order to get app screenshots needed for Web3 news coverage. Now, not only do I get the screenshots I want, but I have a lot to say about friend.tech.
What is friend.tech?
friend.tech is a social DApp running on Coinbases new chain Base.
It was made by a popular crypto personality 0x Racer. This person is a crypto developer with no Rug history, which is a good sign.
This is also why Crypto Twitter is very forgiving, despite the app being rather privacy invasive. (More on this later.)
Your friends market.Each persons profile is represented by tokens (shares). People can buy and sell these tokens.
Holding someones tokens gives you access to that persons chat room.
There will be an airdrop every Friday, not tokens, but points.
How to make money on friend.tech?
After I successfully signed up and got my share (your own first share is free), my first impression of this DApp was that some other persons account seemed to automatically buy my share.
Within two minutes, my share went from 0 ETH to 0.005 ETH (~$8).
Some people keep bragging that they are making a lot of money with this DApp. I now understand whats going on.
This is no different from memecoin and Telegram Bot. You can look for those new crypto influencers and buy their share, then sell after the price rises more, like in the memecoin hype.
To be honest, I really dont know how to feel about it.
How about you not being keen on gamble on other peoples shares, then you can also...earn trading fees.
The moment these bots make a buy share, I earn some ETH thanks to them.
However, the only way to increase transaction fees is to become more popular so that many users will trade your shares. As a result, accounts on the top leaderboards are earning huge amounts of trading fees.
I have more to complain about than the crazy speculation brought about by friend.tech.
Cons about friend.tech
friend.tech is privacy invasive and unfriendly
I actually wanted to try friend.tech earlier, but one thing that held me back was their privacy policy, None exists, coming soon.
When registering, friend.tech will ask you to link a Google account or Apple account. Then, to create a profile, it requires you to link your Twitter account. Perhaps the purpose of this is to thwart Sybil attacks (to ensure the authenticity of the user), but this approach discourages many privacy-conscious crypto users.
The temporary solution so far has been to create a disposable email address and use a non-KYC Twitter account. It is exactly what I have done. I also created a new wallet and deposited ETH through CEX (to avoid wallet association). I also revoked the app permissions in Twitter settings right after signing up.
Youll get bored after a while because theres nothing to do
Im not even mad at friend.tech itself for its gambling activities. My annoyance came more from the fact that there wasnt much else to do except gamble.
You can chat with other users, but only if you own their share (or they own your share). The Explore page shows recent transaction activity, while the Airdrop page shows the points and invitation codes youve earned. Other than that, there are no more interesting activities to do.
On top of that, friend.tech is a web application, so its not as smooth as a native application.
Hopefully this situation is temporary. because…
I see potential
The core concept of friend.tech is inherently pretty dumb. Maybe I see great potential if the developers decide to take this DApp to the next level:
It is best to first perfect the basic functions of a social platform, such as editing your profile (profile picture, bio).
If you want to become a more mature on-chain social platform, you must have the function of adding external website links (OpenSea profile, ENS).
Add posting functionality, where users can publish their thoughts on the platform, just like using Twitter; Add DeFi reward mechanism, like what DeBank does in their DeBank Stream; Value – This is what Web2 social media lacks.
There is also great potential to be a platform for content creators. friend.tech will be the gateway to mass adoption of Web3 as regular content creators and influencers bring their audiences into it.
Cooperate with other encrypted social projects. In my opinion this is faster than trying to create some new functionality myself.
Sounds like a lot of work, especially for an indie developer. But the good news is that they have an investment from Paradigm. Hopefully they can make good use of their seed funding, hire more developers, and add more features (fix the UX first, please!).
Right now, friend.tech is going strong. As the project continues to release major events and developments, they should know how to maintain the buzz and further grow and expand. I hope friend.tech will not fall into the current dilemma of fan token-based SocialFi.
How to use friend.tech?
First, bridge some ETH to Base. Because I cross-chain from other Layer 2, I use Orbiter Finance. You can also use Bases official cross-chain bridge https://bridge.base.org/deposit.
Access https://www.friend.tech/ through your mobile browser and download the app to your mobile home screen.
Developers choose this installation method to bypass App Store and Google Play Store rules.
Then, follow the instructions until you are finally prompted to receive your share. From my experience, if you have sufficient funds, buy more shares immediately before the bots snipe your shares and jack up the price.
Access to the app is by invitation only, so another users invitation code is required, which can be found on Twitter.
Conclusion
friend.techs idea is undeniably cool, although it has some less-than-perfect options for functionality (the app is still in beta anyway). I hope they hire more developers or even a legal team to fix the privacy policy (and release it via the mobile app store).
Overall, perhaps the conclusion we can all agree on is that friend.tech is an interesting project whose development is worth watching.
risk warning:
According to the Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.
