Friendtech on Solana
FriendTech launched on August 10th, to-date there has since been an impressive $250 million trading volume from 227,000 users. With their 5% fee for room host and platform, that is $12.5 million paid out to hosts and $12.5 million paid to the platform. How did this happen?
Users can download FriendTech, connect their X (former Twitter) account and begin earning trading fees when other users trade their keys. The keys offer holders exclusive access to the host’s chat room. Some keys such as 0xRacerAlt’s are now worth 6.3 ETH ($10,000) each — likely because Racer is the founder of Friendtech and holders want to learn alphas of the app.
The financialisation of access to a creator where fans are also investors is the core value proposition of Friendtech. Li Jin, famous investor from Variant Fund refers to this as the ownership economy. Fans who invested in the creator early will win together with the creator as they become successful.
Creator token is not a new concept, Bitclout — an older creator token platform backed by reputable venture capitals like Sequoia and Winklevoss Capital, has attempted it back in 2021. They also received a lot of attention, but that hype slowly faded as the initial enthusiam and liquidity dwindled. A burning question comes to mind — what will it take for Friendtech to refine and sustain product market fit?
Friendtech Improvement Proposal
For usage sustainability, we look to incumbent creator platforms such as OnlyFans and Patreon. These leading web2 membership platforms offer creators business tools such as subscription to generate income from fans. OnlyFans has made over $5 billion in transaction volume in 2021–2022 from over 3 million active creators and 200 million fans. Below are some improvement suggestions with example:
1. Key Pricing
The keys on Friendtech follows a bonding curve where price increases exponentially as outstanding number of keys increase. This pricing of keys heavily benefit early buyers since price increases very quickly later. While this mechanism allowed many creators to gain initial buyers quickly which solved the cold-start problem, it also incentivised bots to hunt for new keys of big accounts and causes potential new fans to be priced out.
Solution: Keys are priced by the seller, allowing the market to price keys more organically. Essentially, an order book.
2. Content Sharing
Key holders mainly invest to make money and connect with the host through their content. Current design of Friendtech only allows for a group chat which means newjoiners will not be able to quickly see the quality of content the host produces.
Solution: A content repository that stores image and posts, a holder-exclusive timeline.
3. Onboarding Friction
To onboard to Friendtech, users have to connect via phone number, apple ID, or Google. Then they have to connect via Twitter, followed by sending ETH to the Base blockchain wallet. This onboarding friction will deter any mainstream users — frankly even some web3 users.
Solution: Let any third party account connection be opt in — connect and that is it.
4. Key Portability
Friendtech keys are only used within the app and are not transferable. Room hosts may want to do key giveaways or use these on-chain assets as ways to perform other activities such as creating token-gated Discord servers.
Solution: Keys are stored in user owned non-custodial wallets.
5. Discoverability
To find new creators on Friendtech, users have to pay attention on Twitter or rely on the trending page in the app which ranks creators by trading volume in the past 15 minutes. Some users rely on telegram bots that spot new accounts that have signed up.
Solution: Content-based discovery using latest technology such as CLIP — a neural network developed by OpenAI that learns visual concepts.
7. Blockchain scalability
Base is a performant layer-2 blockchain developed by Coinbase that has a powerful ecosystem of builders and community. However, the added friction of bridging and the 7-days wait time to bridge back to the Ethereum may pose as unnecessary friction for mass adoption.
Solution: Use a fast and cheap layer-1 blockchain such as Solana.
Friendtech on Solana — Only1
Only1 is a creator membership site backed by Animoca Brands and the Solana Foundation that allow users to trade Passes and gain access to exclusive content and direct message. While Friendtech is a huge success in the web3 space, Only1 sought to gain mainstream adoption by focusing on simplified user experience and fan engagement.
Tokenomics
The Only1 platform is powered by $LIKE which is listed on Kucoin, Huobi, MEXC, and Gate. $LIKE is a long term deflationary token to incentivise platform users and especially creators.
- Users will be rewarded for platform activities starting with season 1 starting this week.
- Creators can later launch ‘Creator Staking Pool’ and earn rewards. When enough fans have staked in the creator’s pool, the creator will enjoy better fees from their Passes sale.
- Platform earns revenue to buyback $LIKE from public markets to both burn and redistribute as reward to users as mentioned above.
For more information on tokenomics, click here.
What’s next?
Only1 has made several partnerships with web3 influencers and local organisations in Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Los Angeles and beyond. The focus for the next quarter is to integrate the top on/off-ramp partner, launch on-chain subscription for creators, and further develop the mobile experience.
