Friend.tech Project Overview: Challenges and Prospects Analyzed

Let's explore the intricate details of the Friend.tech initiative, assess its merits and challenges, and evaluate its earning potential.

The Essence of the Friend.tech Project

Built on Coinbase's L2 blockchain Base, Friend.tech presents a distinctive opportunity to its users. Participants can either issue their own shares or trade existing ones. These shares grant privileged access to exclusive channels, facilitating direct interactions with the influencers or celebrities who have introduced these assets. 

Recent developments suggest a terminology shift within the project. The Friend.tech team decided to rebrand their “shares” feature to “keys” to sidestep potential issues with the SEC. 

In essence, Friend.tech offers a lucrative chance for users to quickly establish and monetize their community. For those with a vast following, it could spell significant earnings. 

Transactions on the platform come with a 10% fee. Of this, Friend.tech retains half, while the other half is awarded to the individual who introduced the share in question. The share's price is dictated by pure supply and demand — increasing with purchases and dropping with sales.

Investment Rounds

The project's inception was either bootstrapped by its developers or silently backed by private investors. Information surfaced on August 18 suggested a confidential investment round led by the Paradigm fund. Paradigm is renowned as one of the heavyweight cryptocurrency venture capital firms, with prior investments in notable projects such as OpenSea, Uniswap, Optimism, Phantom, and Starknet, among others. 

The precise investment sum has not been disclosed.

Statistics from Paradigm's Investment Fund. Source: cryptorank.io

Project Metrics

Friend.tech made its debut on August 11, 2023. Per the analytical platform DefiLlama, the project's current TVL stands at $7.29 million. 

Analytics for the Friend.tech platform. Source: defillama.com

By August 21, Friend.tech climbed to the third spot in the dApps leaderboard based on trade volume, surpassing established exchanges like Uniswap and Pancake Swap, and the entire Tron network. Data sourced from the analytics platform Dune reveals that Friend.tech has amassed a user count exceeding 72,000.

How to Register on Friend.tech

To engage with friend.tech and access its features, follow these instructions:

• Access the friend.tech website from your smartphone.

• Follow the on-screen instructions to add the website to your home screen.

• Once the app appears on your phone, register using either your email or phone number.

• Enter a referral code, which can be sourced from Twitter by searching for “friend.tech codes” or the hashtag #friendtechcodes. Choose recent posts to ensure the codes are current and note that they're claimed quickly.

• After the code's successful activation, link your X (Twitter) account.

• In the app, you'll have the capability to add ETH cryptocurrency from the Base network and start trading in shares, also known as “keys”.

The process might appear intricate, but for those accustomed to cryptocurrency, it's likely a 10-minute endeavor. 

How to make money on Friend.tech

Currently, there are several ways to profit on friend.tech:

•  Craft your own share (key) and benefit when it witnesses a demand surge;

•  Invest in existing shares (keys) and strategize to sell at a premium later;

•  Maintain an active presence on the platform, positioning yourself for potential rewards from both the Base network and friend.tech.

The project team plans on allocating points to engaged users every Friday. As a point of reference, on August 19th, the initial allocation of points was dispersed among 44,000 users. It remains uncertain if these points can be converted to specific cryptocurrency assets or future project tokens.

Pros and Cons of Friend.tech

Advantages of Friend.tech:

•  Low fees and swift transactions due to the use of the Base blockchain.

•  An intuitive operational model.

•  A lack of formidable rivals in the SoFi (Social Finance) domain.

•  Robust liquidity, a result of considerable buzz and widespread recognition.

On the flip side, the project grapples with a few challenges:

•  Security Concerns: A major breach on August 22nd exposed data from over 100,000 users, including their emails, phone numbers, and Twitter handles. Although SoFi projects don't promise full anonymity (since influencers typically reveal their wallets), such a leak may suggest potential platform vulnerabilities.

• App's Preliminary Stage: The mobile app needs refining, with improvements needed in its design, toolkit, and functionality.

• Potential Risks with Shares: When the number of active holders surpasses 50-100, the share prices could inflate dramatically without a corresponding demand increase, hinting at a Ponzi scheme.

• High Transaction Costs: For deals involving shares, the protocol extracts a substantial 50% fee from transactions within the Base network.

• Ambiguous Long-Term Viability: There seems to be minimal tangible benefit derived from the shares, casting doubt on the platform's long-term allure.

Handy Tools

Here's a selection of beneficial tools within the friend.tech ecosystem to help users navigate the project efficiently:

•  friend.tech Monitor. This service keeps track of new user registrations on the platform and the associated value of their stocks (keys).

•  friendsWrap. A dedicated platform for buying shares outright and converting them to ERC-20 tokens.

•  friendmex. An analytical tool for monitoring up-to-date share prices.

Final Words

While Friend.tech seems promising for socially influential figures, the project reaps significant commissions, making the buzz around it beneficial for both its developers and investors.

However, the general user base should tread carefully. It's essential to invest only what one can afford to lose.