Friend.tech Drops 26% After Permanent Smart Contract Transfer

• Friend.Tech’s native token, FRIEND, saw a sharp 52% drop after the development team transferred smart contract ownership to a null address, permanently giving up control.
• Despite earlier success and a brief revival following Version 2’s launch, Friend.Tech’s fees have stagnated since June, earning only $60,000.

FRIEND, the native cryptocurrency of Web3-based social media platform Friend.Tech witnessed huge selling pressure dropping by nearly 52% soon after its developer team transferred ownership of its smart contracts to a null address on the Ethereum blockchain. As a result, they have permanently given control over these addresses.

In its announcement on the X platform on Sunday, September 8, Friend.tech stated that the transfer was made to “prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future”. As of press time, the FRIEND price is trading 48.7% down at $0.060 with its daily trading volume surging by a strong 140%.

The smart contract change follows three months after Friend.tech revealed plans to build its own blockchain, “Friendchain,” causing confusion within the community about the protocol’s future direction. However, the developer team later decided to shut down this project as well. In its official announcement, Friend.tech noted:

Admin and ownership parameters have been set to 0x000…000 to prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future. This change does not affect the separate web client operated at Friend.tech which will continue to function as is. No fees from either smart contracts or friend.tech currently go to the friend.tech developer team.

Although the platform plans to continue to function normally, the revocation of control and implementation of new features seems unlikely.

The Rise and Fall of Friend.tech

Friend.tech became a massive hit in the community following its launch on the Coinbase Layer-2 platform Base last year in August 2023, per the CNF report. Within a month of launch, its popularity skyrocketed to such levels that the platform’s daily earnings exceeded that of Ethereum by September 15, 2023. Back then, the platform’s developers raked in at least $20 million in trading fees. Furthermore, the protocol also conducted a seed funding round backed by VC giant Paradigm.

After launching Version 2 (v2) of the protocol last May, the price of Friend.Tech’s native token plummeted when Racer expressed interest in leaving the Base blockchain, per the CNF report. Although plans for a separate “FriendChain” were scrapped, and the developers chose to remain on Base, the platform struggled to recover.

While V2 and the token airdrop briefly revived user interest, protocol fees have stagnated, generating only around $60,000 since June. With contract ownership now revoked, preventing any future updates or new team takeover, the platform’s chances of revival seem slim.

Since July 2024, the fees earned by the Friend.tech platform have dropped under $1000, and the FRIEND price has also corrected 79% over the last month.