friend.tech: Social Financialization Built on Base

Launched August 10, friend.tech has quickly become the most popular application on Base with over 7,000 ETH of volume in its first week. friend.tech allows users to buy and sell tokenized shares of crypto personalities. Prices are largely derived from popularity, both on Twitter and on the platform (Cobie is the most expensive at 1.22 ETH). Owning shares gives users direct access to interact with the individual via a private chat within the app. As of August 16, friend.tech has processed over 300,000 transactions from 23,000 unique users. There is limited documentation and no visible roadmap, but the platform shared that it will begin airdropping rewards points to beta app testers every Friday for six months, starting this Friday. The app’s full release date appears to be several months away.

friend.tech isn't exactly an original idea. BitClout (launched March 2021 and now rebranded into DeSo) integrated the same playbook of trading creator tokens. BitClout took a slightly different approach by preloading users onto the platform without their permission, landing them in legal scrutiny. Dissidents also criticized the morality of “human-stock markets”, and the ability to bet on the rise or fall of individuals. Regardless, the product received significant attraction from both institutions and retail, receiving over $100 million investment from top VCs such as a16z, Pantera, and Coinbase, and totaling over 300,000 user accounts. While BitClout’s token price and traction have largely fizzled out, the central idea is still intriguing.

Users on friend.tech receive 5% of their share’s volume which is a much greater percentage than other Web3 consumer applications (Lens/NFTs), let alone traditional channels (Twitter/Instagram). This has translated to $650,000 in user revenue on $13.25 million in volume in only one week. Additionally, friend.tech’s total transactions and user counts are higher than Ethereum’s largest NFT platforms since its launch. While these aren’t 1:1 comparisons, it highlights the potential growth for both creators and speculators alike.

User adoption has slowed down since its peak on August 11. However, friend.tech is still in beta testing, and the introduction of rewards points and other features may lead to increased usage. While the roadmap is not available to the public, subscription-based content platforms (i.e. Patreon and Only Fans) are ripe for disruption by allowing subscribers to benefit from increases in creator popularity. On the other hand, the tokenization of people (more specifically influencers) is a contentious debate, as selling shares could introduce negative externalities. Yet building on Base allows friend.tech to immediately target millions of users, and its spike in popularity offers a meaningful signal to Base’s benefits.

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