I don't know if you guys noticed, but the crypto industry, at least the part of it that resides on social media platforms, is experiencing a population collapse. Social interactions are in a downward trend due to a lot of factors. Market conditions, predatory marketing tactics that make people rage quit after a while, badly designed cash grabs disguised as projects with high potential... We have many ways to make people hate us but SocialFi is probably our peak achievement.
Turn Your Friends Into Revenue
I still remember reading this legendary tweet from our good friend CZ and thinking it was yet another funny post from someone on crypto Twitter.
The tweet turned out to be real and I learned to stop taking CZ seriously while simultaneously figuring out why he has no friends.
As every great meme, this one was also turned into a business idea but this time marketing executives are drooling with excitement because everyone can turn himself into a shitcoin now and every single Twitter account can become a spam machine.
It all started with firend.tech. A seemingly benign idea where your followers get to trade your "shares" in order to become part of your private chat group. If more people are buying than selling, your shares or keys become more expensive. While all of that speculation is taking place you also earn trading fees. And if that isn't enough, the more people you invite to join the ponzi, the more allocation you will get when a token airdrop occurs.
Combine all of those incentives, offer them to someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers, and moral boundaries start to bend for many personalities on Twitter. Many of them are sharing screenshots where they are making 10-20 or even more ETH just from trading fees alone. Who wouldn't turn their friends into revenue, right?
This idea was bad enough on its own but we all know that true innovation comes with copycats. Very soon we had Tip Coin and many, many other "We are the Friend Tech of [insert blockchain name]" projects popping out of nowhere. Since all of them are competing for the attention of very few active users that are still coming back to Twitter, they need to go wild with incentives, speculation and airdrop farming.
Inviting people wasn't enough anymore. You now need to use a specific hashtag, tweet about the project 5 times per day, reply to 25 other posts about the project and in general increase the reach of the project in exchange for a promised airdrop that you probably won't get because they will just identify you as a bot and allocate more tokens to people that actually bring in some meaningful numbers.
No hard feelings though, it's all part of the business.
To get the airdrop you need points.
To get points you need to spread the word about the project and invite new people that will compete for points.
The more points you have the higher your allocation BUT the more people join the less your points are worth because there is no cap on he total points that can be earned...
In other words, in more ways than one, chasing these airdrops is very counterproductive. Just don't do it...
A Lasting Trend or A Passing Fad?
If you ask me, it is very clear where this is going. Even if the rewards from these airdrops become miserable there will be a few individuals that actually make some good money from promoting them. Those posts will always trump the ones warning people to stay away from this nonsense but it is what it is... I think this trend is here to stay, at least for a while.
If you do end up wanting to give it a shot here are some quick observations I made regarding the most popular ones:
- Friend Tech
I already wrote a tweet about this but in case you missed it - if you have more than 100 followers and have some valuable content/info to share with the world I suggest you join FT as an experiment.
Sniping bots will trade your keys as soon as you join the platform because it is a speculation fiesta over there. Get some free trading fees, buy some keys, network and connect with other creators... It is a good experience overall but a very bad business idea in my book.
- Post Tech
This one is a copycat launched on Arbitrum. It is a blatant copy of Twitter and is trying to do things differently than FT with public posts instead of "paid groups". Most big CT accounts are already over there and there is an ongoing airdrop campaign along with a $100K pool that is distributed to those that earned points during the epoch.
- Polyfriend Tech
This one is just proof that Polygon is a ghost chain. Activity is super low, keys are rarely being traded and the overall vibe is just... Polygon. What do you expect from it anyway?
But, if you want to be super-eraly to something this is your chance. Seems to me there are like 5 of us over there and no new people are even planning to join. The good part is that you don't need invite codes to register.
Conclusion
These projects are a net negative for crypto simply because they create so much junk content that brings value to no one other than point farmers. It will remain a trend as long as the airdrop pools don't get diluted to the point where everyone is getting a few bucks for hours and hours of work.
It is an easy way for projects to turn followers into free labor and knowing the general IQ level of crypto Twitter it will last at least for a month or two, before they figure out they are the ones being farmed.
Until then... If any of my friends want to be turned into revenue, here are some free invite codes:
Friend.tech:
ft-fha109ca
ft-himq8ydo
ft-sc3xs2sc
Post.Tech on Arbitrum:
pt-phbcdvsshu
pt-fvdmwwyyyz
pt-zsotdvknmz
pt-lc8msuz19s
pt-be1udymncs
pt-btnoog32t6
pt-ddswajpdvl
pt-hkuydscyf6
pt-88jo8nzjui
pt-xxly3od4cu
pt-1mireyqhsp
pt-ip97cqawcw
pt-hkhlndfuva
pt-dv9ppkd7jp
pt-2qzcnagxur
pt-somvoprhll
pt-8oov5j3oms
pt-t7rkanaeoq
pt-qgec8czp0l