tl;dr
Friend.tech, a social app on Base Ethereum L2 network, is leaving Base to launch its own network, Friendchain, with Conduit. The move has drawn mixed reactions, with concerns about its monetization strategy and the impact on users. The announcement includes a call for users to join the Friendchain t...
Friend.tech, a social app on Base Ethereum L2 network, is leaving Base to launch its own network, Friendchain, with Conduit. The move has drawn mixed reactions, with concerns about its monetization strategy and the impact on users.
The announcement includes a call for users to join the Friendchain testnet for a $FRIEND airdrop. Some community members are skeptical about the migration to a new network, questioning the timing and strategy.
The FRIEND token's price has seen fluctuations, currently trading at $0.78, representing a 20% drop in the past day and a 60% decrease from last month. The token's all-time high was $3.26, but it has since experienced significant price volatility.
At times wildly popular social app Friend.tech got a mixed reaction to news that it's leaving Base to launch its own network, Friendchain, with infrastructure platform Conduit. Launched in August 2023 on the Base Ethereum L2 network developed by Coinbase, Friend.tech quickly gained traction within the crypto community due to its approach to social interaction and monetization. But it drew skepticism and ire for exactly the same reasons—that its monetization strategy put the project at risk of drawing ire from regulators.
The announcement was followed up with a call for users to secure a spot on the Friendchain testnet, which would qualify participants for a $FRIEND airdrop snapshot. But some members of the community seemed weary at the thought of another chain. One pseudonymous Friend.tech user, The Giver, wrote on Twitter that it's too soon for Friend.tech to be trying to migrate its project and userbase onto a new network.
The decision to leave Base isn't a complete surprise. In May, pseudonymous Friend.tech co-founder Racer hinted at it in a post on Twitter. "System design bounty: If you can figure out a way to migrate friendtech off of Base without causing major issues for users, and it works well enough that we decide to use it, we will pay you $200K," the co-founder wrote at the time. But since then the post and the Twitter account have both been deleted.
Meanwhile, the FRIEND token saw a brief spike to $1.29 on Sunday, but has otherwise seen its price take a beating over the weekend. At the time of writing, FRIEND is trading for $0.78 after having dropped 20% in the past day. It's now 60% lower than it was this time last month, according to CoinGecko data. The current price is just 1.8% higher than the token's all-time low, which it saw on Friday.
In late April, hype was building for the project's 100% airdrop. The token began trading on May 3 for $3.00, dropped almost immediately, but surged back two days later to set its all-time high of $3.26.