It’s been a messy launch for friend.tech’s FRIEND token
Judging by the reaction to today’s FRIEND airdrop, SocialFi platform friend.tech has made more enemies than friends.
The FRIEND claims process turned into a race for the exit, as technical difficulties forced users to resort to workarounds to dump on each other.
The heavily-’farmed,’ 100% community airdrop meant no market makers to steady the price, leading to a purely ‘PvP’ rush to sell as quickly as possible.
With just 10% of each user’s allocation available to claim directly, receiving the full allocation meant joining a ‘Money Club’, as well as following 10 other users on friend.tech’s new v2.
However, despite the SocialFi project initially having launched last summer, the new user interfaces weren’t working as smoothly as one would expect from a Paradigm-backed project with over $50 million in fee revenue.
Technical difficulties
Researcher 0xCygaar noted that the surge in traffic had overloaded friend.tech’s backend, with apparently no scaling measures in place.
However, the proofs used to check user eligibility were also reportedly malfunctioning, with some sharing instructions for manually claiming from the contract, via the Base block explorer, BaseScan.
Once the claims process was improved, the rate of dumping picked up. Larger holders were seen dumping their allocations, including Crypto Twitter influencers such as Hsaka and CL.
Mixed messaging
The X (formerly Twitter) account of friend.tech had taken an unconventional approach when teasing the airdrop, with trolling and memes preferred over detailed instructions.
Airdrop announcements are often subject to scam replies, impersonating the original account and phishing for gullible victims.
The Block’s Tim Copeland apologized for the re-publication of one such instance related to friend.tech’s trolling. He suggests using a plugin from DeFiLlama which makes it easier to identify which tweets in a thread are genuine replies.
Read more: Seneca Protocol hack highlights dangers of Ethereum’s token approval mechanism
Airdrop farmers
As with all hotly-anticipated airdrops, industrial-scale ‘farming’ had taken place in the run-up.
One screenshot shared by an X user provided a window into the scale of the farming via bought followers and falsified engagement.
Read more: Are Friend.tech keys securities?
Airdrop farming is seen as controversial, with some characterizing those who complain as ‘e-beggars’ who are unhappy with the way they’re given free money. However, it’s also argued that these users leave their capital at risk in a new protocol and should be rewarded in kind.
Spoofed metrics are not representative of true adoption, but with many projects more concerned about boasting high user numbers, trading volume, and transaction activity while looking for VC investment, perhaps they’re willing to turn a blind eye.
At the time of writing, FRIEND is trading at around $1.12, according to data from CoinMarketCap. DEX Screener data shows the token briefly spiking to a high of $169 shortly after launch.
FRIEND isn’t the only airdrop whose recipients ended up unhappy this week.
Tuesday’s EigenLayer drop faced criticism (and a spike in withdrawals) based on delayed transferability, initial unlock periods, and geo-fencing.
In response, the Eigen Foundation has adjusted the allocation to its ‘passionate users,’ by rewarding an additional 100 EIGEN to close to 300,000 users.
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