Social platform Friend.tech, which lets holders buy “shares” of people who hold an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, and grants the buyers certain privileges, has surged to more than 100,000 addresses since its Aug. 10 launch according to a database created by Yearn Finance developer @Bantg.
The database, listed briefly on GitHub and now withdrawn, apparently listed the crypto wallet addresses and linked X accounts. The growth correlates with the huge revenues made by the platform since its Aug. 10 launch, with over $25 million in fees generated, according to DefiLlama. A Dune Analytics dashboard corroborates the finding, pegging the number of unique users to at least 80,000, with 15,000 users added since Sunday.
A slew of personalities outside of crypto circles on X joined Friend.tech. Richard “FaZe Banks” Bengtson II, co-founder of the influential esports community FaZe Clan, joined the platform late Sunday and saw his share prices quickly become among the most expensive. Shares of NBA player Grayson Allen also surged in the hours after joining. The shares grant the holders privileges, such as the ability to send private messages to the sellers.
While the GitHub repository itself has created concerns about users viewing blockchain transactions linked to these wallets, some developers suggest that the wallet addresses going public doesn’t matter and isn’t an immediate cause of worry.
“For most tech-savvy users it was obvious that Twitter and deposit addresses can be linked,” said @AlexSmirnov. “I think friend.tech should have made it more explicit and notified users that their deposit address will become public and will be traced by Twitter profile.”
@Bantg, the Yearn Finance developer, suggested in a Monday tweet that users had given Friend.tech permission to post on X on their behalf – which could open up a possible attack vector.
Meanwhile, Friend.tech is quickly going viral. The platform has made over $1.04 million in fees, set at 5% of the value of each transaction over the past 24 hours. That’s banked the platform some $709,000 worth of ether in revenue (what the platform takes after paying out gas fees and other costs), data from DefiLlama shows.
UPDATE (Aug. 21, 14:58 UTC): Rewrites first paragraph to focus on growth.
Edited by Sheldon Reback.
