Token-gated social media app friend.tech israking in more fees than Uniswap.
friend.tech, an application that provides token-gated chat rooms, appears to be catching a second wind.
Friends.tech has reached $1 million in daily revenue, an all-time high, according to Token Terminal.
The revenue is based on a 5% fee charged on all trades of friend.tech keys. Rooms' guests also take a 5% cut from trades, the company said in a statement.
Joe Coll, an angel investor and former venture capitalist, thinks the team behind friend.tech has made some crucial design choices that have driven the app's success.
The use of Twitter's social graph, its simplification of the crypto wallet experience, and the choice to deploy as a progressive web app, which operates similar to a mobile app, bypasses app stores, as key choices in infrastructure.
While still just a month old, friend.tech's second wave of momentum has made it difficult to dismiss as a flash in the pan - while many are no doubt drawn to its speculative aspects, there's arguably unique value to be found in token-gated chatrooms.
It may favor the kinds of content not rewarded elsewhere - accounts like DtDcTr, relatively unknown on X, have attracted 70 keyholders, which means access to the chatroom costs nearly 0.52 ETH, or well over $800.
Another user who goes by Gareth shared how they are able to leverage friend.tech to amplify their reach on social media.
Friends.tech continues to attract developers to build tooling for the application - after the advent of tools to track top accounts, convert keys into fungible tokens, and others, Manifold, an investment firm, deployed a new smart contract which allows users to buy up their own keys immediately upon creating an account.
This is useful because traders have been using bots to snipe influencers' keys as soon as they join the platform. Users with substantial followings were not effectively betting on themselves early by buying their own keys.
The co-founder of the crypto-focused development and venture studio, Animoca Brands, used Manifold's tool earlier today. So did MEVCollector, who now holds 35 of their own keys.
To be sure, it's too early to call friend.tech the future of social media - the program is receiving a boost from a points program that most assume will translate into a token airdrop.
Regardless, friend.tech has achieved an enviable position among crypto apps - for the second time in less than a month, the app only lags Ethereum by fees, DeFi Llama said.