"Only rich people can use FT", is Friend.tech starting to take the black and red route?

In the new round of crypto bull market, the project seems to have been involuted to the point of relying on nonsense to attract traffic.

From April 16 to 17, Friend.tech’s official Twitter account sent several tweets in a row, shocking community users. The content of these tweets was roughly "Friend.tech users are all rich people, and poor people should not get involved with Friend.tech."

The official Twitter editor first published a message in Chinese, "When friendtech v2 is released, make sure to take all the white people's money," as an opening. This tweet received over 350,000 views. Why post in Chinese? Who are the white people? Before the community could figure it out, six hours later, the official Twitter account posted another tweet, further explaining the intention: "This app is only for rich people. Please classify it yourself."

These two posts came out of nowhere, and many people thought that the Friend.tech official account was stolen. Some people said, "This hacker is interesting. He didn't send a scam link, but only sent two mocking tweets. But it's been 13 hours and the account hasn't been restored yet?"

But on the 17th, the community began to realize that it seemed that the editor of the official account was really "crazy." At midnight Beijing time, Friend.tech updated another dynamic, "If you are not rich, please don't use friendtech. This doesn't make any sense to you." This tweet used 5 "Please", which was enough to feel the official account's disdain for users without money.

It is understandable that it is just a mockery. After all, the characteristics of Freind.tech when it first became popular included "high barriers to entry", and its official Twitter profile has always been "Luxury social media". For the upcoming V2, these tweets can also be regarded as a marketing strategy that is somewhat radical but sufficiently distinctive.

But the editor of the official Twitter account did not seem to be satisfied with this effect. After a few hours, the official Twitter account began to ask "What encrypted social app would you recommend to users who cannot use Friend.tech because they have no money?" Combined with the popularity of Farcaster, a Base ecosystem, this tweet can easily be regarded as a mockery of Farcaster.

15 minutes later, a callback chart of DEGEN, the token of the Farcaster ecosystem of the Socialfi application, and the caption "Oh, now I understand why non-rich people hate us so much recently" appeared on the official Twitter account. As we all know, in late March, DEGEN brought the BASE ecosystem and Facarser to the fortnight with a 40-fold increase, but recently DEGEN has experienced a callback drop of about 60% from its high point.

As of the time of writing, the number of views of this tweet has exceeded 100,000, and the comment area is full of Friend.tech old users’ requests for deletion, "You are drunk, brother, delete this quickly" and helpless self-mockery "Great, now my Friendtech points have become worthless."

And as expected, the heart-wrenching response from the Farcartser community: "This is where Farcaster airdropped to us (before DEGEN skyrocketed), what does the FT airdrop look like? What is the FT airdrop? Are you still waiting?"

In the field of encryption, tokens rise and fall is common. After all, no one's token can last forever, not to mention that Friend.tech has not yet issued a token. Such ridicule seems a bit too "tasteless" in the community.

Soon, Friend.tech’s official Twitter account issued an apology, but it was a bit sarcastic and stubborn: “We are sorry. We did not mean to offend anyone with our last tweet. They told us they didn’t care about money. We didn’t realize they were lying.” Then, the official Twitter profile was changed to “precious spaces online and onchain”.

In fact, before these drama dynamics, Friend.tech’s official Twitter account had been a bit out of touch recently, with the homepage filled with meme-style operational copywriting. The content of his tweets includes:

"Bad friends stab you in the back. Good friends stab you in the front. Rich friends bought your key on friendtech"

"A good friend is better than a thousand bad women"

"If she just likes you because she sees how much your key is worth, that's okay. This is you. Why are you anxious about whether she will accept a worse version of herself?"

Recently, the market has experienced a correction, and the crypto community has been complaining. The editor of Friend.tech also did not let go of the complaints about the bull market, "It's crazy, we missed the opportunity to deploy v2 in a few weeks of bull market."

On April 14, after the well-known legendary trader GCR posted a message to encourage the community, Friend.tech’s official Twitter account followed suit and posted: “I like when the market crashes because we’re usually too focused on our own little world and who’s doing better than who. But when things get bad, like they are right now, I really feel like we’re all experiencing panic together.”

Why did Friend.tech's official Twitter suddenly go "crazy" by frequently "showing off" and using confusing CX rhetoric, and even going so far as to drag down competitors and cause public outrage?

It may be because Friend.tech V2 will be launched soon. For Friend.tech, which has seen a sharp drop in users, a sharp drop in revenue, and a significant decrease in discussion, it has become somewhat difficult to attract attention using conventional marketing methods.

From the Defillama data, it can be seen that since October 2023, Friend.tech's protocol revenue has been declining, and its TVL has continued to shrink. Along with this, users also began to lose money. On February 18, Christian, co-founder of the crypto fund NDV and NFT giant whale, announced on social media that he had lost 200 ETH and would withdraw from Friend.tech, and would also refund the fees of his "KEY" holders.

By last month, Friend.tech's minimum daily income was only a few hundred dollars, less than a few tenths of its peak period.

Fortunately, since there is no coin issuance, the community's attention to Friend.tech has never disappeared. At present, Friend.tech points have accumulated a total transaction of 2.98 million US dollars on the Whales Market, and the transaction price per point is concentrated in the range of 4.5-6 US dollars.

On April 5, Friend.tech’s official Twitter account announced that “starting next week (April 8), linking Twitter to your Friend.Tech account will become optional. New users will be able to choose any unclaimed username when registering.” The official Twitter account also explained that this is in preparation for v2 to open Friend.Tech to new audiences outside of Twitter and allow existing users to link their Twitter to new accounts before v2 launches.

According to 21co on-chain analyst Tom Wan, on April 8, Friend.tech protocol revenue soared to $380,000, with a net inflow of 1,300 ETH, the highest net inflow since September 29, 2023; at the same time, trading volume increased to $7 million, far exceeding the average trading volume of $1 million in 2024.

But short updates can hardly maintain user interest. As of yesterday, Friend.tech's daily protocol revenue was only $50,000.

Back to the Friend.tech official Twitter account, the official editor's wave of operations did attract enough attention, but it seemed to have led in the wrong direction. Community member 0xLoki said, "This script looks like the team has divided tens of millions and messed up, but the x account administrator is a little dissatisfied with this approach." According to Scopescan monitoring, in the past week, the Friend.tech team's multi-signature address has deposited 4,424 ETH (US$13.7 million) into Coinbase, and the current income contract still has 11,274 ETH (US$34.76 million).

However, it is not the first time that the Friend.tech team has been monitored to withdraw money, and some people believe that such operations are in preparation for the issuance of coins. But in any case, the "black and red operation" strategy of the Friend.tech official Twitter account has worked. However, after being watched by the crowd, where will Friend.tech go?

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