Friends again? A closer look at FriendTech hype and post-v2 activity

It has been a while since The Block’s Data & Insights newsletter last talked about the social finance platform, FriendTech.

As a reminder, the premise behind the protocol was that users could buy keys (previously called shares) of popular creators, which granted key owners exclusive chats and content from the “influencer.” The platform was pretty novel when it launched, and to this day, it remains the largest SoFi platform by total value locked, despite several clones launching in the wake of its success.

FriendTech was also bolstered by launching on Base in the late summer. While FriendTech was having its own bout of hype, the network it was built on was having a wave of excitement, as well, giving it an added boost.

The protocol saw pretty explosive growth. Daily transactions on the platform peaked at over 500,000 just about a month after launching. There were days when over 70,000 addresses were buying friend.tech keys. But as we talked about with Runes, hype can only get you so far.

Coming into winter, the platform all but faded into obscurity. Daily transactions on the network didn’t exceed 40,000 from the end of October until early April.

But friend.tech activity started to pick up last month, although not to the same levels seen when the platform first launched. It is now more common to see tens of thousands of transactions a day.

One major draw for friend.tech users at the start were friend.tech points, which were earned by engaging with the platform. Points have now become a sort of precursor to airdrops, so many people wanted to get their hands on some.

At the end of January, FriendTech announced it had distributed 90 million points through its beta period and would distribute another 10 million points after its v2 launch, temporarily putting points earning on hold. The platform’s X account continued to tease the upcoming v2, but in early March posted an image of bunnies in a boardroom saying, “photo from the friendtech board meeting where investors agreed to give up their right to dump on you to let us create the first truly user controlled currency in one of the craziest experiments that crypto has ever seen,” stoking a new wave of excitement for the airdrop.

The token and v2 launch were originally slated to go live on April 29, after continued promotions on the account through the spring. It was pushed to May 2 to allow creators to share their airdrop with keyholders, but the snapshot was confirmed on April 27.

Even though points weren’t being distributed anymore, it seems the anticipation for the airdrop was enough to get people back on FriendTech, as transactions have picked up again over the past month.

The airdrop was met with some backlash due to the delay and also difficulties claiming it. But the airdrop was also praised for giving 100% of the tokens to the community, as opposed to investors.

This is an excerpt from The Block's Data & Insights newsletter. Dig into the numbers making up the industry’s most thought-provoking trends.