If you are lucky enough to live in Paris when you are young, no matter where you go in the future, Paris will follow you all your life, because Paris is a moving feast. --- Moving Feast

This Hemingway essay can roughly become:

If you are lucky enough to live in the currency circle when you are young, no matter where you go in the future, speculation will follow you all your life, because speculation is a mobile feast.

Most recently, it went to friend.tech.

In a dreary and tortured bear market, an innovative and speculative fomo project can easily attract all the flowing attention.

Ponds, airdrop expectations, financing news, and buying and selling shares... friend.tech seems to focus on social, but it is still fi in essence. Ask yourself, are you downloading this software to socialize? Obviously not.

After all, in the currency circle, any social behavior that is not aimed at economic gain is just hooliganism.

But, in another grand speculative feast, will you be the one who eats meat? As of press time, the total transaction volume of friend.tech’s shares has exceeded 1 million, with more than 66,000 independent buyers and 25,000 independent sellers..

Is it too late for me to go in now? Before asking this question, it is even more important to figure out what it is and where it is going.

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Renewal

Was friend.tech’s instant success an accident? Yes and no.

From the perspective of the external environment, there are indeed reasons for the lack of hot spots in the market; but more importantly, it lies in the product design itself.

In fact, from the perspective of psychology and communication, if a social (or wearing a social shell) product can quickly become popular, the insight into human nature is indispensable. In terms of human weakness, the classic seven deadly sins of Catholicism are: arrogance, envy, rage, laziness, greed, gluttony and lust.

Before friend.tech, Stealcam, a photo sharing dapp from Arbitrum in March, has already shown us the use of lust, or voyeurism:

Users can upload a picture, but the picture itself is coded. Others can view the original image by stealing, but this behavior requires payment of ETH. Each picture can be stolen unlimited times, and each steal will increase by 10% and add 0.001 ETH to the price of the previous steal.

This kind of design of the more you buy, the higher the price and buy is equal to owning rights, is it a bit like friend.tech buying and selling shares?

In all fairness, although you don’t say anything, what types of pictures do you think are most likely to spread under such a product design and interface?

However, the characteristics of Web3 anti-censorship and rapid asset flow made Stealcam popular at that time. In less than two weeks, there was no airdrop or token, and the accumulated transaction volume exceeded 313 ETH just by natural growth.

Human weakness cannot be underestimated.

But is this mode of paying and checking the code map a new thing, obviously not. Web2 social applications have long understood this.

Domestic QQ has long had a flash function. A photo can only be viewed for a few seconds and then deleted. Other social software for strangers also has similar functions such as tipping for viewing coded pictures and burning after reading.

akin,friend.tech is actually a refurbishment of the above-mentioned Stealcam, and in a sense uses greed. But its entire product is more reasonable in design of initiation, dissemination and transaction:

Let’s look at transaction design first.

The same as buying a coded picture, you can directly buy a users stock share. Buying a picture means viewing the right, and buying a share means the right to have a private conversation with the user directly; at the same time, popular The more expensive the pictures are, the more expensive the shares of popular users (KOL/big shots/wealth password masters) will inevitably be.

But different from stealcam, after you read the coded picture, you need the next person to act as a counterparty to buy this picture; friend.tech does not have the concept of trading counterparty, you can directly sell the shares corresponding to a certain user , there is no need for the next person to buy it. In other words, your selling behavior does not need to be premised on liquidity, and you can enter and exit as you go.

Why is it said that this product takes advantage of people’s greed? The essential reason lies in:

• There is no difference in everyones perception of who has the most social influence, but the speed of buying shares varies.Since it is linked to Twitters social account and relationship network, you can easily know who is the boss; the sooner you buy the shares of the boss, the lower the price, which means that latecomers need to buy at a higher price. Sell ​​and reap huge profits. Therefore, it is easy to develop fomo emotions.

• You can earn points for free with just one use, and there is an expectation of airdrops.When using friend.tech, the menu bar even directly opens an airdrop function, which clearly tells you that there is an airdrop for using the product and being active, but currently the airdrop is for points. As for the use of points in the future or not, I will leave you with a thought first. This makes it easy for you to feel that you can squeeze the wool.

• Dont forget, this is not the same as simply pulling wool. Social products have a network effect. The more people who want to get in, the more people will be able to use the product, and the experience of the product itself will be better (more KOLs or big shots can be found).

Additionally, on product launch:

friend.tech directly divides Twitters social relationship, traffic and account influence, without having to build a social network from the beginning to the end. Using shares as a hook, parasitic tweets are used for dissemination and user fission.

As a result, in terms of dissemination, incoming users are happy to share this app, so as to draw more people in based on their original social circles. In the end, the people who pull in raise their own shares, and they can also fall into the benefit.

Wait, does friend.tech’s user fission routine look familiar?

In the early days of Pinduoduos development, it made full use of WeChats huge traffic and existing social network, and mobilized relatives and friends to cut it off. The more people who helped, the more people were recruited, and the closer you were to buying your favorite products at a low price. closer.

Has Pinduoduo succeeded? Its done. Why? Because no one doesn’t love a little bargain, especially in sinking areas. In Web3, is there anyone who doesnt love small and cheap? Otherwise, where would the concept of pigs knuckle rice come from?

Beyond the user fission routine, friend.tech’s business is actually similar to “paid subscription” or “knowledge payment”. Domestic Web2 knowledge Odaily, small secret circle and other private domain traffic games have been played for several rounds.

Therefore, in terms of marketing methods, business mechanisms and insights into human nature, friend.tech is actually a complete overhaul of the old and new. You can find shadows of mature web2 business and previous web3 products in every link.

However, the economic incentive design of web3 and the speculative atmosphere in the encryption circle, coupled with the fermentation of news about Paradigm’s investment in the seed round, friend.tech has become a rare hot item in the dull bear market.

When the gears of destiny start turning, can you benefit from it?

Hidden danger, irresistible enthusiasm

The more fomo you are, the easier it is to ignore the risks.

After analyzing the contract code of friend.tech, SlowMists security expert Yu Xian found that the contract owner is an EOA address, and the assets in the current contract have reached 2100 ETH and are continuing to grow. (It is also the receiving address for protocol fees) If the owner permissions are leaked, protocolFee may be modified, and the user will bear the loss.

Moreover, the centralized hosting of private keys is also a time bomb. In theory, we can only hope and manage properly. However, as a mature social application, if the part involving user assets buries hidden dangers in this form, as the network effect expands, the user area affected after the incident will be wider.

In addition, some KOLs also said that the model of friend.tech can easily cause moral hazard: for example, if a KOL joins the product, the other party can maliciously buy someones share at a high price, and then wait for the price to plummet to accuse or report the case.

Although this description is somewhat far-fetched, it actually reflects the moral dilemma of influential users who settle in friend.tech---if they dont settle in, they may lose a lot of revenue and potential opportunities; if they settle in, if they cant continue to provide Correct and valuable content can easily be misinterpreted and lead to a decline in reputation. After all, a drop in share can easily be linked to a loss of reputation and a breakdown in trust.

But as the saying goes, we should not look at what a person says, but what he does. We have seen from some crypto Twitter influencers in the English circle that after rationally analyzing the pros and cons of friend.tech, they often still bring their own invitation codes.

I mentioned the risks, but you can also try.

After all, everyone is willing to pursue profits and try new projects, and its not shabby to do so. There is no so-called foolproof project in the encryption world, and there are many people who are willing to take risks.

Using small things to make big things happen is the credo that most people follow when walking in the crypto world.

Ponds is a Ponds passport

Has friend.tech changed anything?

It seems that he has changed the conversation pattern of Twitter private messages, but in fact it seems that nothing has changed.

First of all, current statistics show that those with the highest stock shares are still the existing big names in the encryption circle, such as cobie and zhusu. It seems that the original voice and influence have only been copied to friend.tech in the same proportion.

If you buy shares from cobie and zhusu, will they really say a few words to you?

In addition, the structure of the product remains Ponds. Those who enter first have extremely high returns and rely on those who come later to reach a consensus on the user value to purchase shares, thus further pushing up the shares of the same users they hold.

For those smart people who entered the market more than 10 days ago, they may have already used the skills of scientists to develop scripts, collect and organize various big guys to form a database, and monitor and track whether these big guys have settled in friend.tech . Once someone gets on board, they can buy shares from these influential tycoons at a fraction of the cost.

The pattern remains the same, but the enthusiasm seems unabated.

As public opinion fermented, more and more people joined in. For example, today the president of Y Combinator has settled in, and Multicoin has publicly expressed its appreciation for friend.tech...

Therefore, it seems that we cannot carefully and seriously benchmark and compare a social product in web3 with a mature web2 product, and express disdain for its Ponzi structure.

The audience, purpose, development stage and scope of influence of the two are different. Rather than criticizing and criticizing, it is better to participate selectively. Questioning mode, understanding mode, and participation mode are probably the mental journey of all people in the currency circle.

In the currency circle, a world with barbaric rules and striving to be the first, Ponzi is the pass for Ponzi, and prudence may be the epitaph of the prudent.