FRIEND Plummets 60%: "Machi Big Brother Loses $7.7 Million," Can Friend.tech Regain Its Glory?

The decentralized social platform Friend.tech officially launched in August last year. It quickly gained popularity due to its unique gameplay, airdrop expectations, and support from renowned venture capital firms such as Paradigm. However, this wave of enthusiasm significantly waned by October last year. Interest was only reignited in April this year when it announced the upcoming release of V2 and the opening of airdrop claims.

Friend.tech opened the airdrop claim for the FRIEND token on May 3 and launched the V2 version on May 4. However, since its launch, the price of FRIEND has been steadily declining. According to CoinGecko data, FRIEND is currently priced at $0.92, down from a peak of $169 on May 3, representing a drop of over 99%. In the past month alone, it has fallen by 56.6%.

Huang Licheng's Unrealized Loss of $7.7 Million

Notably, as FRIEND continues to plummet, well-known artist Machi Big Brother Huang Licheng, who has been closely following the direction of Friend.tech and is also the largest individual holder of FRIEND tokens, has suffered significant losses. On May 5, he tweeted that FRIEND's price would rise to $10, but this goal seems increasingly out of reach.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, since May 3, Huang Licheng has spent a total of 4975 ETH (approximately $15.6 million) to buy 8.6 million FRIEND tokens at an average price of $1.81. Based on the current price of $0.92, Huang Licheng has an unrealized loss of about $7.7 million.

Can Friend.tech Regain Its Glory?

Defillama data shows that Friend.tech's TVL (Total Value Locked) peaked at $52.04 million in October last year but has been gradually declining since then, with a sharp drop starting in May this year. The current TVL is only about $9.73 million, indicating that V2 and the airdrop tokens have not successfully attracted users and funds back.

DUNE data shows that the number of traders and transactions for Friend V2 significantly decreased after mid-May. On June 8, there were only 139 traders and 449 transactions. The creation and number of creators for Clubs were also bleak, with only 33 creations and 33 creators on June 8.

Friend.tech is striving to regain its past popularity. Co-founder Racer first announced in May that they would migrate away from the Base chain and then announced on June 8 that they would partner with cryptocurrency infrastructure company Conduit to launch their own blockchain, Friendchain, using FRIEND as the gas token.

Encouraged by this news, FRIEND surged over 10% yesterday. However, whether Friendchain can save Friend.tech from its current bleak performance remains to be seen.