friend.tech: The Viral & Exclusive Decentralized Social Media App

As the web3 community develops, people are realizing the crypto space has some engaging social applications. One of the newest web3 social media sites is friend.tech. Within just a few months of launching, this crypto project has already built an enthusiastic audience and earned over $1 million in fees alone. However, it has also seen its fair share of controversies after its users were hit by a string of SIM swap attacks. Should you try to get involved in friend.tech? Learn more about the project to see whether it's right for you.

Key Takeaways:

• friend.tech, a decentralized social network driven by a blockchain token system, hopes to provide users with both socialization and monetization opportunities. 

• Users can connect their X accounts to their friend.tech accounts and sell social tokens that offer special perks.

• While friend.tech has experienced exponential growth, many analysts are pronouncing the network officially dead. 

What Is friend.tech?

friend.tech, a decentralized social network driven by a blockchain token system, hopes to provide users with both socialization and monetization opportunities. People can connect their X (formerly Twitter) accounts to their friend.tech accounts and then sell tokens that offer special perks.

What Are Social Tokens?

Social tokens are web3 digital currencies that make it easy to monetize a brand. Creators sell social tokens to their followers, who then receive access to private chat rooms, exclusive content or direct interactions between the brand and its audience.

History of friend.tech

friend.tech was designed by Racer, a pseudonymous developer behind several other crypto projects. Not much is known about this designer beyond Racer’s Twitter/X handle of @ØxRacerAlt. Even their social media presence is limited to a single account with privacy settings that block most users.

However, it's known that Racer was originally the lead dev on Tweet DAO. As one of the first decentralized social media sites, the project allowed people who purchased NFTs to post on a shared Twitter account. Tweet DAO originally experienced a lot of hype in the crypto space before fading away after Twitter determined that it had blocked the site's use agreement. Now, friend.tech is taking the concepts from Racer's previous project and applying them to modern social media.

What Does friend.tech Aim to Achieve?

Friend.tech aims to create a seamless connection between social media and monetization, making it easy for crypto influencers to interact with followers while raising money from their supporters. Not only does this allow people to monetize their own presence without violating terms of service on other social media sites, but it also creates new levels of interaction between users.

Ultimately, friend.tech strives to create a more socially collaborative environment for crypto and web3 enthusiasts. By facilitating user engagement and giving users more rights over their own data, friend.tech hopes to build online communities where people share trading advice, investment goals and more.

How Does friend.tech Work?

friend.tech requires users to sign up by linking their X accounts to the site and creating a self-custodial wallet through Privy. Social media users can then browse the crypto community and pick the crypto influencers they wish to follow. Users purchase shares of the influencers they're interested in. Also called "keys," these shares are social tokens that unlock exclusive content and can be resold at a price that’s based on current supply and demand.

Keyholders (and other social media users with keys) receive access to exclusive chat rooms with the influencer. Crypto influencers can also offer further perks, like investment classes or airdropped rewards. Right now, becoming a friend.tech influencer or user is only available through invite codes, but this may change in the future.

Features of friend.tech

In addition to the basic system for building online communities and forming exclusive chat rooms, friend.tech also includes several other features.

Friendtools Mirror

The friendtools mirror is a way to access the highlights of exclusive chat rooms without having to pay for individual access. Any user who holds at least 1,000 friendtools (FTOOLS) tokens can access the friendtools mirror. This bot forwards messages from the top friend.tech chatrooms straight into the friendtools Discord channel in real time. It provides access to channels that would otherwise require a total of 30 ETH in purchases to view.

Notification Tool

This convenient bot notifies channel members about new users who are joining the platform. It helps ensure you don't miss out on any early investment opportunities. This can also be a great way to learn about community members you wouldn't otherwise know.

Filters

You can further refine your notifications by filtering the types of social media influencers for whom you receive alerts. The filters feature lets you define whether you want to look at new users with more than 50,000 or 100,000 followers, which allows you to easily prioritize small, mid-sized or large influencers.

Live Wallet Tracking

Make the most of your friend.tech assets by tracking the wallets of successful traders. This bot lets you see the social token purchases of notable friend.tech traders. You can get great investment advice and view social media trends with ease.

The Popularity of friend.tech

friend.tech's beta launch was one of the most popular blockchain technology projects of 2023. After first launching on Aug 11, 2023, the platform quickly began to attract attention. By Aug 19, it was raking in $1 million in gas fees each day, rising to $1.7 million just three days later. People were desperately begging for friend.tech invite codes, and at its peak the site was processing over 15,000 transactions per minute. Everyone from crypto resource UpOnly to non-crypto influencers like video gamer Nadeshot was talking about friend.tech.

However, the number of buyers and sellers quickly plummeted from around 85,000 to just 17,800 as the amount of money flowing into friend.tech dropped rapidly and the price of keys for crypto influencers started to fall. By Aug 28, crypto analysts were already declaring that friend.tech was dead.

Is friend.tech a Scam?

The precipitous decline in popularity has led many people to call friend.tech a pump and dump scam. Users point out that the project's developers have been behind controversial failed projects, such as Tweet DAO and Kosetto. In both these cases, the projects flooded social media with impressive claims, promised to release more exciting news and then suddenly disappeared. Now, friend.tech developers are already going private on X, so there are some valid concerns that the team behind the project might quit developing it if it doesn't take off.

Ultimately, friend.tech isn't an outright scam. However, any new blockchain technology project has some inherent instability. Whether or not the platform will be a success will depend upon its ability to attract high-profile influencers. Though its design doesn't mean the developers can take users' money and run, it does mean that people who don't do their own research can lose a lot of money on risky investments.

friend.tech SIM Swap Attack

Unfortunately, in a recent unsettling wave of events, friend.tech has found itself entangled in a series of SIM swap attacks that have not only shaken the trust of its user base, but also raised eyebrows in the crypto community as they’ve brought to light the vulnerabilities that even blockchain-driven platforms can encounter.

In a sequence of events starting on Sep 30, 2023, a user, “froggie.eth,” alerted the community on X (previously known as Twitter) about a SIM swap incident affecting their friend.tech account that resulted in a loss of more than 20 ETH. This was followed by similar reports on Oct 3, with musician Daren Broxmeyer revealing a loss of 22 ETH due to a SIM swap amidst a flurry of phone calls, presumably intended to distract him from receiving a warning message from his telecom service provider. 

Another user, “dipper,” expressed bewilderment over their account breach, despite employing robust passwords, and a fourth individual, “digging4doge,” parted with approximately 60 ETH following a phishing scam that deceived them into divulging a login code. By Oct 5, 2023, a total of 234 ETH (worth $385,000) had been drained from just four different friend.tech users.

Manifold, a cryptocurrency investment firm, underscored the potential risk of friend.tech, stating that a hacker gaining entry to a friend.tech account could essentially "wipe the entire account." If one considers that a third of friend.tech accounts might be linked to phone numbers, an estimated $20 million could be susceptible to exploitation through user-targeted attacks on friend.tech’s network. Furthermore, Manifold emphasized that, in theory, the whole of friend.tech is in jeopardy, due to the manner in which the platform’s security is configured, and prioritizing the resolution of these issues is imperative.

The situation has escalated to such an extent that it isn’t just the financial losses that are a concern, but the overarching implications for the security and reliability of not just friend.tech, but all decentralized platforms, which are often hailed for their robust security mechanisms.

friend.tech’s Response

In the wake of these attacks, friend.tech is now under the microscope with the crypto community, investors and users keenly observing how the platform navigates through this crisis. In response to the attacks, friend.tech has added a new feature on Oct 5, 2023, for users to change their login methods. 

friend.tech has also addressed inquiries regarding the non-activation of Privy's two-factor authentication (2FA) passcode feature, providing clarity on the situation. In the quality assurance (QA) process conducted on Oct 2, it was identified that Privy's UX does not prompt users to verify their passcode. Consequently, if users enter it incorrectly, neither Privy nor friend.tech has the capability to reset it. Given its present functionality, the feature poses the risk of users irrevocably locking themselves out of their own accounts. 

Recommendations aimed at enhancing the safety of the UX have been put forward. Privy is actively working to incorporate these suggestions, and friend.tech plans to integrate the features once these modifications have been implemented.

Lessons Learned

These incidents serve as a stark reminder that, while decentralized platforms offer a plethora of opportunities and have revolutionized the digital space, they’re not entirely immune to sophisticated and malicious attacks orchestrated by cybercriminals.

As friend.tech endeavors to regain its footing and restore user confidence, the platform is expected to undertake a rigorous review and enhancement of its security protocols to shield against future attacks and safeguard user assets and data. The incidents have also sounded an alarm for other decentralized platforms to scrutinize and bolster their security mechanisms, ensuring that they aren’t next in line to be targeted by such malicious cyber activities.

As we continue to observe the developments and actions taken by friend.tech in the aftermath of these attacks, these incidents serve as a pivotal moment for all stakeholders in the crypto and decentralized space to reflect, learn and fortify their digital realms, ensuring that the promises of security and trust in decentralized platforms aren’t merely theoretical but are firmly embedded in practice.

Benefits of Using friend.tech

Despite its decline in popularity, there are still some investment opportunities in friend.tech. If you purchase shares at the right time, you can sell them for more money when the influencer spikes in popularity.

The other main advantage is in the online communities found on friend.tech. Things of interest are happening in the chat rooms, so potential users have access to all sorts of helpful crypto news and investing advice. As an exclusive, decentralized social network, friend.tech provides some special content not found anywhere else.

Risks of Using friend.tech

Though friend.tech has its perks, the base network isn’t that reliable. The website design and the friend.tech database have a lot of security vulnerabilities. Since you have to trust friend.tech with your Twitter/X login and your wallet information, you could end up losing valuable data if you don't take additional security steps, such as two-factor authentication. Moreover, you could also end up losing your ETH — just like other friend.tech users in the abovementioned SIM swap attacks.

The other big risk concerns the declining value of friend.tech social tokens and keys. If the site doesn't interest more users soon, the investment items you purchase on friend.tech could end up being worthless.

friend.tech Road Map

A major concern for investors is the fact that friend.tech lacks an official road map or white paper. It has no documentation of its progress or goals. The only things users know are that the project is currently in a beta launch, and that its developers hope to progress to a wide release after six months. They haven’t mentioned whether any new features are in the works.

Should I Use friend.tech?

Based on its spiking popularity in early August 2023, this project is worth exploring. With an invite code, you get access to a crypto community filled with motivated users and decentralized finance (DeFi) experts. However, don't forget that friend.tech has already had its share of controversy, so it's a good idea to exercise caution. You need to do your own research and avoid overpaying for keys or invites. For best results, potential users need to remain objective and avoid investing more than they can afford to lose. In addition, it’s recommended you use a new email address with 2FA when you sign up for an account on friend.tech, as advised by X user 0xQuit. 

Closing Thoughts

friend.tech's ability to provide convenient and effective monetization of existing social media brands helps to fill a void in the current DeFi world. However, some issues with the base network and the project's developers suggest it might not stick around for long. While you should certainly grab an invite code if you can and check out friend.tech, avoid treating this investment as a sure thing.

#Bybit #TheCryptoArk