Will SocialFi Make a Comeback with Friend.Tech V2 on the Horizon?
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Will SocialFi Make a Comeback with Friend.Tech V2 on the Horizon?
Overall, the V2 update delivers an improved user experience and an integrated environment.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: David C
Translation: TechFlow
With the upcoming relaunch of friend.tech, SocialFi is once again becoming a hot topic in the cryptocurrency space.
The term SocialFi may bring to mind BitClout and DeSo, crypto-native alternatives to Twitter that had their moment in 2021. However, BitClout quickly lost real traction, overshadowed by DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs, leading many to believe that SocialFi was simply premature.
Yet certain NFT projects and DAOs today represent the most successful examples of SocialFi, having built social networks deeply integrated with DeFi mechanics—demonstrating remarkable staying power and arguably laying the foundation for this cycle’s “meme coin” wave of SocialFi.
As friend.tech V2 approaches, let's examine the current state of SocialFi, what the field has been missing, and whether the new version of friend.tech can make a lasting impact.
friend.tech V1 and the Meme Coin Craze
Launched in August 2023, friend.tech allowed users to buy and sell "Keys" linked to Twitter accounts.
These Keys functioned as access passes to private in-app chat rooms and exclusive content, effectively monetizing social interaction. Within just two weeks of launch, the platform attracted over 100,000 users and generated around $25 million in revenue—a significant milestone in both user adoption and financial performance.
While the idea of monetizing social interactions isn’t entirely new, friend.tech introduced a fresh take on SocialFi through its social token system.
The Keys weren’t just access tokens—they tapped into humanity’s natural tendency to rally around charismatic figures, effectively combining strong social coordination with economic incentives to create a unique and powerful mechanism for community engagement and cohesion.
However, despite its impressive initial appeal, friend.tech fell into a lull by October last year, with low activity and declining revenue—only recently rebounding ahead of the V2 release.
Interestingly, during this period of low activity on friend.tech, meme coins swept across the industry, flooding crypto Twitter and media headlines with dogs, cats, and hats—the signature icons of popular meme coins.
These tokens thrived primarily on Solana and to some extent on Base, where faster transaction speeds and lower costs enabled broader participation—unlike Ethereum L1, where high fees could deter many users.
Meme coins essentially replaced friend.tech’s form of SocialFi with a sillier, more playful variant—but it’s still SocialFi. Meme coins have long been compared to NFT collections, and I believe this is because they both create distinct social networks along our timelines. Dogs and hats—and dogs wearing hats—signal group identity just as clearly as Milady PFPs and their distinctive tweeting styles mark holders as part of a unique tribe.
Other similarities between these asset classes are evident in the recent launch of the DEGEN L3 and the subsequent announcements of Azuki and BAYC launching their own L3s. Meme coins have even sparked initiatives reminiscent of those seen in DAOs from the previous cycle—WIF’s crowdfunding campaign for the Las Vegas Sphere echoes ConstitutionDAO and its attempt at a decentralized auction bid.
friend.tech Returns
Although SocialFi has existed in various forms for years, it has always been here.
SocialFi’s fragmentation across different blockchains—with NFTs on Ethereum and meme coins on Solana—has hindered its appeal as a dominant trend. While each blockchain nurtured its own unique flavor of SocialFi, the lack of a unified platform prevented a coherent growth trajectory, leading many to view them as isolated trends rather than parts of a larger SocialFi movement.
But friend.tech still has a chance to change all that.
friend.tech V2 is set to launch later this week, packed with features designed to integrate NFT communities, DAOs, and meme coin social dynamics into one cohesive experience.
John Wang, a crypto investor and participant in the friend.tech founder Racer's chat group, summarized many of the new features V2 will introduce to enhance user engagement and personalization. Let’s take an early look at what’s coming.
For Groups
Room owners will be able to customize their chat spaces aesthetically and functionally through options like voting, raffles, and visual themes.
They’ll be able to create Money Clubs, enabling groups to manage shared finances and mint tradable on-chain collectibles, meme coins, and various other media—thereby creating additional revenue streams for communities. To support this, friend.tech will also feature a native decentralized exchange, serving as a central hub for trading all such assets—possibly its biggest upgrade.
Chat rooms will become more dynamic overall, featuring reactions and mentions, improved notification systems, pinned messages, raffles, and referral programs—the latter aligning perfectly with how crypto grows and interacts with people.
These tools are designed to increase engagement within the platform and keep users active and invested in their communities.
For the Platform
Platform-wide improvements include new discovery features, enhanced keyword search, personalized recommendations for key purchases, and other user-specific suggestions.
Given security’s critical importance in crypto, V2 will also integrate cold wallet support for enhanced protection and introduce two-factor authentication. Combined with performance improvements like faster loading times, this will expand the market segment friend.tech can serve, potentially driving greater adoption.
Overall, the V2 update delivers a better user experience and creates an integrated environment that unifies all successful iterations of SocialFi to date—NFTs, DAOs, and meme coins—into a single, cohesive ecosystem.
Bringing all these verticals under one roof at friend.tech will demonstrate how NFTs, DAOs, and meme coins have already become instances of SocialFi, and may finally provide SocialFi with a dedicated home—solidifying its status as a persistent and enduring trend.
Redefining SocialFi
Through its various forms—from Ethereum-based NFTs to Solana-powered meme coins—SocialFi has shown it is already widespread, yet fragmented across multiple blockchains. Each iteration, while successful in isolation, has been limited by environmental separation, preventing SocialFi from advancing as a unified trend.
But with the launch of friend.tech V2, that could all change.
By offering an integrated platform, friend.tech V2 could consolidate these fragmented assets into a single, powerful network. This unified environment may firmly establish SocialFi as the dominant force in our industry.
That said, with a highly anticipated airdrop on the horizon, friend.tech needs to maintain sustained market attention to achieve this goal. Nevertheless, given the breadth of upgrades V2 will bring, I personally believe it will succeed.
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