Crypto\u2019s newest decentralized social media (DeSo) app, Friend.tech, has been met with intense criticism over a decision to punish users who opt to use forks or copycat versions of its tokenized social media platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make sure loyal users are rewarded fairly during our beta, users moving to forks and copies will automatically opt out of earning Points and forfeit existing points,\u201d wrote the official friend.tech X account in an Aug. 28 tweet. <\/p>\n
\nWe expect @friendtech<\/a> clones and other types of copies will emerge. <\/p>\n
To make sure loyal users are rewarded fairly during our beta, users moving to forks and copies will automatically opt out of earning Points and forfeit existing points. They will be able to use the app normally pic.twitter.com\/C1rTEQQr17<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 friend.tech (@friendtech) August 28, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While Friend.tech did not make mention to any specific competitors, and number of X users in the reply pointed<\/a>\u00a0to a new DeSo or \u201cSocialFi\u201d application called Shares that is scheduled to go live to public beta on Aug. 31. <\/p>\n
\nShares #roadmap<\/a> for the following week.<\/p>\n
We’ll be sharing daily dev logs on Medium about updates. We started building the $SHARES<\/a> platform’s backend a couple of weeks ago, and started with our frontend this weekend – so far, it’s been a huge progress! pic.twitter.com\/oLEYMlhIcF<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 shares.finance (@SharesFinance) August 21, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Friend.tech has been airdropping \u201creward points\u201d to its beta testers every week, which will total a distribution of 100 million points over six months. <\/p>\n
The team has not yet shared what the points will be ultimately used for, only mentioning<\/a> on Aug. 15 it \u201cwill have a special purpose when the app enters official release status.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nWe just did our first Friday Points Airdrop to 44k users. <\/p>\n
Some reminders:
– 100M points will be distributed during the six month beta period
– Airdrops happen on Fridays
– Points are recorded off-chain
– Points will have a special purpose once the beta period ends<\/p>\n\u2014 friend.tech (@friendtech) August 18, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Some expect it to translate to tokens to friend.tech governance, while others believe it could have some financial significance for users. Others believe<\/a> that due to the seed round investment<\/a> from Paradigm, there will likely be a friend.tech native token airdrop in the future. <\/p>\n
Friend.tech\u2019s announcement did not go down well with members of the crypto community.<\/p>\n
Within the first hour of the announcement being posted, it attracted hundreds of negative comments and reposts that derided the app for its anti-competitive move. <\/p>\n
Another reaction from an X user over the recent announcement. Source: X (Twitter)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cThreatening \/ penalizing users for trialing other platforms is completely against everything this industry stands for,\u201d wrote<\/a> pseudonymous trader CryptoKaleo in response to the announcement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a prime example of how not to handle competition in Web3 lol \u2014 excited to read the apology in a few hours,\u201d said<\/a> another. <\/p>\n
Following the intense backlash, friend.techs’ pseudonymous founder “Racer” walked back the earlier decision in an apology statement issued from the social media apps official X account on Aug. 29.<\/p>\n
Racer backtracked on the move, saying that it was a “stupid statement” that was made out of fear of potential competition for friend.tech app.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\npic.twitter.com\/IZtkRveuH6<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 friend.tech (@friendtech) August 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Related: <\/em><\/strong>Friend.tech denies report that database of over 100K users was leaked<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
The announcement comes less than three weeks after its public launch of Aug. 11. Meanwhile, Friend.tech has seen a drop in key metrics<\/a> such as activity, inflows and volume over the past few days. <\/p>\n
At the time of publication transactions on Friend.tech have declined more than 90% from its peak of nearly 525,000 transactions on Aug. 21, with less than 50,000 cumulative transactions on Aug. 28, according to data<\/a> from Dune Analytics.<\/p>\n
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