FRIEND Price Tanks 52% as Friend.tech Developers Give Up Smart Contracts Control

Coinspeaker
FRIEND Price Tanks 52% as Friend.tech Developers Give Up Smart Contracts Control

FRIEND, the native cryptocurrency of the Web3 platform Friend.tech, has recently come under massive selling pressure dropping more than 52% in the last 24 hours. This happened as the developers of Friend.tech gave up all control of the platform’s smart contracts by effectively locking the current system and thereby preventing any future changes on the platform.

Friend.tech was the popular Web3 social network where users traded tokens for ‘keys’ to access the feeds of influential individuals. Launched last August 2023 on the Coinbase Layer 2 network Base, Friend.tech became a quick hit within the crypto community.

The craze around the protocol was so high that its daily earnings exceeded that of Ethereum within a month of launch. Later, Friend.tech also conducted a fundraise through a seed round from crypto VC giant Paradigm, for an undisclosed amount.

In its announcement on Sunday, September 8, Friend.tech stated that “no fees from either smart contracts or the website currently go to the Friend.tech dev team’s multisig”. Besides, the platform will continue to remain operational with the loss of developer control making the implementation of new features unlikely, if not impossible.

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 https://t.co/YOHabcBL3H which will continue to function as is. No fees from either…

— friend.tech (@friendtech) September 8, 2024

After the launch of the Friend.tech Version 2 of the protocol in May, the price of its native crypto FRIEND plummeted after Racer announced plans to exit the Base blockchain. Soon after, the developers decided to abandon the plans of the FriendChain while opting to remain on Base. However, following this crash, the FRIEND token value never recovered.

Despite an initial boost in user activity from the V2 launch and token airdrop, protocol fees quickly began to stagnate. Since June, the platform has generated only about $60,000 in fees. Additionally, this recent revocation of contract ownership makes it absolutely unlikely for the new team to take over and introduce new features. Thus, it further reduces the chances of the platform’s revival.

On the yearly chart, the FRIEND price is down by more than 96%.

FRIEND Price Tanks 52% as Friend.tech Developers Give Up Smart Contracts Control