From the peak of glory to the fall from grace, the rise and fall of Friend.Tech

The market rises and falls together, and the prices of some AltCoins never return.

Likewise, there may be products and businesses that will never return.

In the ‘What to Play Today’ daily question, who still mentions the name Friend.Tech?

However, you didn’t say this a year ago: Friend.Tech is the new trend of SocialFi, the darling of Paradigm’s investment, the hot topic written in various research reports, and the god of wealth that liberates the KOL fan economy…

How did it become a discarded piece that even dogs don’t play with now?

Attention is not eternal. The once popular encryption product has already fallen from grace without anyone noticing.

But the encryption market has memory, so let’s take a brief look back at how Friendtech played a good hand poorly.

The ultimate noise at the peak, the terrifying silence after the illusion is shattered

Let me tell you a ghost story.

Data shows that Friend.Tech has less than 100 daily active users today.

In the previous wave of enthusiasm, its daily active users once exceeded 77,000, but the number of active users has dropped by 99.9%.

But about a year ago, Friend.Tech emerged as a rising force.

In mid-August last year, friend.tech emerged, with a total volume of Key transactions exceeding 1 million, with over 66,000 independent buyers and 25,000 independent sellers. It can be said that it is an encryption product that almost everyone participated in, just like StepN.

Just two weeks after the launch of FT’s V1 version, the platform has attracted over 100,000 users and generated approximately $25 million in revenue, marking significant achievements in user adoption and financial performance.

At that time, the financial performance of FT was still relatively healthy, and it was even able to generate so-called real revenue sharing, distributing about 6 million US dollars of revenue to users.

The idea behind everyone’s FOMO on this product was actually quite simple at the beginning: get in early, buy the key, and make money. Quickly occupying the fan zone of celebrities and KOLs became a wealth code, and FT also had a point system that determined your point level based on your activity level, creating an expectation of getting an airdrop.

In the previous gloomy Bear Market, it did bring a long-awaited Liquidity frenzy.

The world’s public data is very transparent, and this hot trend naturally attracts the attention of institutions in the industry. In the same month, FT also announced that it had obtained seed round financing from top VC Paradigm, Airdrop’s expected blessing and capital injection, which pushed the fear of missing out emotion to a climax.

With a new product model, solid user data, and endorsement from top VC… In the previous cycle, when there was no debate about high FDV and low liquidity, and VC was not seen as an opposition, having these elements, Friend.Tech does hold a good hand.

But we all know that the FT selling Key model has some flaws and monotony. Once there are not enough people joining, the inherent flaws will quickly lead to a loss of popularity for the product.

As we can all see, the FT team certainly understands this as well, so the top priority is to have good products, operations, and economic expectations management, and extend the life and vitality of FT.

Just a good hand, but it was played terribly.

As fierce as a tiger in operation, the product is 250.

If you rewind time, you will find that FT’s decline can be traced back to the details at different time points.

A extreme sentence may summarize it all ---- skilled in trading, but the product is mediocre.

Do not misunderstand, it is not to say that there are no merits in FT’s products, on the contrary, it has the attractiveness of traffic and Liquidity that other products did not have before; It’s just that compared to other operational efforts and directional choices, the product itself seems to be stagnant.

The initial traces of excessive force, as mentioned in our previous article “Two-level reversal, friend.tech still agreed with you and the imitation plate as fren”.

FT initially strongly resisted users to play other similar copytrading platforms, and openly stated that they could not earn FT points by playing other copytrading platforms; after being resisted by the community, the founder immediately issued a public apology for fear of losing users, and the sudden reversal was unprepared, which can be described as a public relations disaster.

It is very likely that the FT team itself did not know how to operate and deal with competitive relationships at that time. For a product with a phenomenal presence, going into battle unprepared seems a bit unprofessional, and the details are even more telling.

Another fierce operation is the excessive PUA in V2 version.

When it comes to the end of April this year, after a long silence, Friend.Tech has promised to release the FRIEND Token and a brand new V2 version on the 29th, igniting the community’s enthusiasm once again.

However, the release of Token and version is delayed until May 3rd, which is within the acceptable range for investors; what is quite controversial is the rules and experience of claiming FRIEND Airdrop:

In addition to following at least 10 users on FriendTech, users must also join 1 club to receive Airdrop Tokens; obviously, the design of the club is to encourage users to long play V2 version, promote activity through the design of the club, and give users something new to play and continue.

It is already annoying that you have to join before receiving the coins, and the forced binding makes people unhappy. On the day of receiving the coins, many people encountered difficulties in the process, and the Tokens could not be received for a long time. At the same time, because the Liquidity pool of FRIEND was not sufficient, it started to plummet in the Secondary Market. Many people haven’t received it yet, so the value of the Airdrop is halved.

I’ve lost all my coins, how can I still have the heart to listen to your PUA again?

A netizen joked: The only update we get after 8 months is ‘Club’, and we only use it to claim Airdrop.

The misalignment of incentives and product features has caused a decrease in confidence in FT.

But when the house leaks, it just happens to rain all night. The FT team then stirred up trouble on their own, and Racer of Lianchuang publicly stated that they “hope to migrate the product out of the Base network” and pointed out that the product is being marginalized and isolated in the Base ecosystem.

And draw a clear line with the public chain behind you and publicly complain. This approach is obviously a dangerous game; the market also votes with its feet, and FT once again encounters a double fall in users and prices.

What’s even more poignant is that in June, FT announced its upcoming proprietary chain Friendchain, transforming from the application layer to the infrastructure layer.

But will the market foot the bill for this kind of transformation?

Compared with the excessively forceful operation and direction selection, the FT product seems to have changed little from a year ago, with a simple and even crude page, no separate APP, and the old routine of Pangshi games…

As a mediocre product, it’s not surprising that it falls from grace and faces internal and external challenges.

On the other hand, other social products like Farcaster have created many other Meme coins, such as FRAME, FAR, POINTS. The hot trend continues one after another, but FT seems to have fallen behind in comparison.

What is the passport of the P&G?

Perhaps FT should not have sat on the altar in the first place.

Relying on an improved version of the Panshi model, it can fly higher, but the inherent flaws of the aircraft cannot be ignored.

Pangshi is indeed the pass of Pangshi, but it does not necessarily guarantee that it can always continue. FT exploded the market last year, with a combination of various factors, where chance meets necessity. However, this necessity cannot be fully replicated.

Rush up for profit, and retreat for no profit, the reason is very simple, just that the process of FT is pumped for a long time.

Ultimately, SocialFi products like FT have not found a real product-market fit. They are more like short-term speculative products rather than meeting real needs. Coupled with some shady operations, the outcome is unsurprising.

But if all the phenomenon-level encryption products are just historical phenomena, the best encryption product is still speculation.

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