Friendtech continues to set the pace
From novel usage patterns to security innovation, Friendtech shows us what great looks like in consumer
Max Segall
|May 21, 2024
It’s been two weeks since Friendtech’s v2 launch day, and much like v1, the team delivered a category-defining experience.
Between the introduction of clubs/presidents, their in-app token economy, and much more, it’s not surprising to see that Friendtech has driven >400K transactions, with tens of millions of dollars of inflows across hundreds of thousands of active users since the v2 launch.
Today’s blog post celebrates this incredible team’s first-principles thinking and deep understanding of consumer behavior. Let’s dive in!
Some of our favorite things about Friendtech v2
Between embedded wallets, gamified social interactions, and bootstrapping a network with an existing online reputation, many of the patterns we’ve seen in onchain consumer apps can trace their origins back to Friendtech v1. If anything, v2 has even more to be excited about.
Clubs: They’re like group chats, but with a friendtech twist. Once a user creates a club, anyone can join it by buying its keys with the in-app currency, $FRIEND (more below). Club key prices are subject to bonding curves like individual users’ keys in v1. All keyholders get a vote on the club’s president, who gets to manage the club and choose moderators and silence users. The president voting dynamic creates a fun, chaotic social dynamic, that’s already stirring up drama among Privy teammates (per the below).
$FRIEND Token: As a part of the v2 launch, Friendtech launched their $FRIEND token, 100% of which was distributed to users based on points accumulated in Friendtech v1 (impressively, the founding team and investors decided against token allocations). The $FRIEND token serves as the in-app currency, can be swapped for ETH or contributed to LP pools (“Farms”), to receive a share of the app’s revenue. In order to claim the initial token drop, users needed to follow at least 10 other users and join one club, enriching the app’s network.
Account funding: By introducing embedded wallets, Friendtech was able to demonstrate how much smoother an onchain app experience can be by keeping wallet interactions native to the application. However, one of the biggest points of v1 friction was funding the embedded wallets. V2 goes a long way to address this challenge with the introduction of: 1) funding embedded wallets via Coinbase Pay (i.e., a seamless direct transfer from a user’s Coinbase CEX account), and 2) connecting an external wallet to the app for a bridge + funding flow. It’s one of the best embedded wallet funding experiences we’ve seen.
Recovery passwords and identity linking: There are a few innovative account security measures that Friendtech deserves credit for being among the first in our market to adopt. First, they give users the ability to add an embedded wallet recovery password, meaning that even if a user’s account gets compromised, the hacker would need the user’s chosen password in order to use the wallet. Seamless sign up for everyone, and opt-in protection as users accumulate assets. Users can also link and unlink sign in methods in case they lose confidence in their original, or if they’d like redundancy to prevent lockout.
Looking forward
These are just a few of the many innovations that make the Friendtech experience special, and as a result have attracted an impressively active user base of crypto celebrities. With such an impressive v2 launch, it’s clear that this team is just getting started, and we’re so proud to support them as they continue to drive our market forward.
