Crypto Twitter has found a new Web3 social app to obsess over. Friend.tech, a decentralized platform that calls itself “the marketplace for your friends”, opened its invite-only beta test on Thursday afternoon. Built on Base, crypto exchange Coinbase’s new layer 2 network, the app allows users to tokenize their social network. According to Yuga Cohler, senior staff software engineer at Coinbase, users create a profile to sell “shares” of themselves to their followers. Early metrics show its rapid adoption, with over 126,000 transactions and 4,400 ETH in trading volume since its launch, over $8.1 million. Crypto influencers flocking to friend.tech are already seeing returns on their shares.
However, some have raised concerns about how the platform’s pricing model works as well as its data privacy. Laurence Day, decentralized finance expert and advisor at protocol Euler Finance, posted a Tweet with a share pricing model for friend.tech. According to the model, it’s a simple supply and demand structure. Andy Chorlian, founder of shuttered fractionalized NFT trading platform Tessera, joined the application Thursday and has already raked in almost $1,000 in earnings. But beyond buying and selling shares, users have expressed concern about how their data would be captured and stored on friend.tech. The lack of any privacy policy should be concerning to users who have no idea where their data may be going, or what it’s going towards.
“Do your own research” applies to Web3 the same way it does to the greater crypto industry. Friend.tech’s genesis, mission and lack of roadmap all raise red flags, and must be critically surveyed as it continues to scale. With a slogan that reads “the marketplace for friends”, the application may not be so friendly after all.