Is Friend.Tech Dead? Trading Activity and Fees Continue to Plunge

Only days ago, the decentralized social platform Friend.Tech was the talk of the town, spearheading the cryptocurrency media scene. But the current metrics tell a different story.

Data sourced from Dune Analytics shows that Friend.Tech’s daily trading volume has plummeted 94% from its peak, standing at $16.9 million on August 21. Merely a week later, this amount has dwindled down to a meager $953,000.

User Participation Drops Drastically

From a massive pool of 35,000 daily traders, the figure shrank to 6,000 by August 17, marking an 83% decrease. By August 27, the trading fees also took a nosedive from $1.7 million to a mere $95,000. 

Several users expressed concerns about issues such as prohibitive trading costs, laggy platform performance, and steep pricing structures. Adding to the woes, bots that sneaked into the system caused an unwanted surge in transactions by getting ahead of genuine trades.

Critics Weigh In

Not long after its inception, critics labeled Friend.Tech as “obsolete,” attributing this sharp decline to decreases in platform activity, capital influxes, and trading volumes. The platform, which had its much-anticipated beta version released via Coinbase’s layer-2 Base on August 11, had an impressive start. 

By August 19, within a week, it surpassed heavyweights like Uniswap and even the Bitcoin network with fees exceeding $1 million in a day. Sadly, this success was short-lived. By August 26, the daily fees had been reduced by 87%, standing around $215,000, as per DefiLlama’s records.

Transaction Tremors

Transaction activities experienced a drastic fall as well. August 21 saw a booming 525,000 transactions, which nosedived to just above 51,000 by August 27, leading to several posts on social platforms lamenting the platform’s downfall.

Friend.Tech centers on a unique concept of trading keys. These keys grant buyers access to private conversations with sellers, with the platform pocketing a 5% fee.  Lisandro Rodriguez, Coinbase’s payments risk manager, recently commented on the platform’s downfall, hinting at internal challenges and flawed implementation as probable reasons.