Friend.tech token falls 28% after team transfers smart contracts to null address

Friend.tech, the decentralized social media application, gave up complete control and authority over its smart contracts on September 8, abdicating all oversight to Ethereum’s null address.

The delegation transfer led to a decrease in the FRIEND token, which touched a low of $0.057 today. It is down from $0.80995, its price on September 8 before the announcement. 

Friend.tech cedes authority of all its smart contracts

In an X post on September 8, Friend.tech announced the delegation of ownership for its smart contracts. 

Admin and ownership parameters have been set to 0x000…000 to prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future.

This change does not affect the separate web client operated at https://t.co/YOHabcBL3H which will continue to function as is. No fees from either…— friend.tech (@friendtech) September 8, 2024

Since then, the crypto social media app has seen its FRIEND token prices fall by over 28%, from a high of $0.80995 to around $0.057 at the start of the day today. At the time of writing, the Friend token has slightly picked up and is currently priced at $0.0593

Friend.tech’s market cap has also been heavily hit, settling at only $6.66 million from around $7.43 million over the last 24 hours. According to DefiLlama, the total value locked on Friend.tech has also fallen by 93.4% from its ATH of $52 million in early October 2023 to less than $3.44 million.

Friend.tech’s token earnings in decline since May

Roughly a month after the launch of Friend.tech’s token, the platform started generating more token revenues than Ethereum; then, at its peak, one of its core keys was worth 8.9 ETH, nearly $14,500.

However, in May, FRIEND plummeted sharply following X posts from its co-founder, Racer, who revealed intentions to abandon the Base blockchain. Thereafter, Racer’s posts were inaccessible, stirring more questions about the relationship between the two founders of the platform.  

Despite the V2 protocol release in May, the platform’s average protocol fees were around $60,000 in June. With the recent transfer of authority, the platform’s future remains uncertain.

Serpin Taxt, CEO of Ethos, expressed disappointment with Friend.tech, stating that the brand’s value had effectively reached zero. He suggested that while a new product could potentially revive revenue, it would struggle to gain sufficient support. 

Taxt also mentioned that, despite facing legal challenges, he would have been interested in acquiring Friend.tech’s technology for integration with Ethos, but that opportunity is no longer available.