Who can take over after the social craze, Friend.tech?

Who will succeed Friend.tech in the post-social media era?

Article by: Anthonyx, Port3 Network

The Decline of Friend.tech’s Social Trend

The emergence of Friend.tech once sparked everyone’s enthusiasm for SocialFi. This is mainly because it cleverly applies Shares to community interests and uses a very aggressive Bonding Curve to anchor prices. Its uniqueness lies in combining social and purchasing behavior, creating a game among users. In this process, users achieve the wealth effect. The platform, early-stage KOLs, and users can earn decent profits and further spread the trend, attracting the participation of numerous users.

Although Friend.tech’s model is simple and effective, it also has some obvious problems:

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1. The price curve of Keys is too steep, limiting the number of users a single community can accommodate

2. The application scenarios supporting Key prices are not diverse enough, failing to form a true fan economy

3. Lack of continuous value injection and high transaction fees, leading to user confidence issues

4. High and non-transferable transaction fees hinder the liquidity of Shares

However, Friend.tech’s “Fi” attribute far exceeds its “Social” attribute. It is essentially a Ponzi game based on the fan economy, serving as a monetization tool for KOLs’ traffic (influence). When this financial model reaches a certain stage and lacks new user support, it eventually becomes unsustainable, leading to a price collapse and dissipating popularity.

Social applications cannot sustain a crypto Ponzi scheme and face insufficient motivation after a brief surge in popularity. Due to rapid price growth and high transaction fees, only the entry of new users can maintain the upward trend, otherwise, it will plummet. Additionally, the rise of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum has stimulated the overall market, shifting everyone’s focus to the broader wealth effects of major cryptocurrencies and BRC20 tokens.

Who Can Succeed Friend.tech?

Despite the decline of the social trend, Friend.tech’s model still inspires many projects. Various Friend.tech imitations exist on public chains including Friend3, TOMO, and Stars Arena. TOMO has introduced a voting mechanism to attract KOLs, while others continue to explore social scenarios. However, these innovations cannot sustain the popularity of Friend.tech.

By observing countless past trends, we come to the realization that blockchain is a place suitable for financial activities, not necessarily for social purposes. Without exception, all projects that become hot trends have innovated in terms of financial models, achieving positive feedback loops. Crypto itself also possesses strong Ponzi attributes. There are very few successful cases of social platforms built on the blockchain because users come to the blockchain not for socializing but to make money!

We have to admit that blockchain is still in its early stages of development, and large-scale application in social scenarios is still impractical. Friend.tech’s model is more suitable for transplantation into DeFi (Decentralized Finance) rather than social scenarios.

Port3 BQL Key – Innovative DeFi based on Bonding Curve

Port3 is well-known for its previous Social Mining activities. After Social Mining, Port3 introduced a new feature called BQL Mining, which incorporates the mechanism of Bonding Curve, thus upgrading the gameplay of FT (Fungible Token) in the field of DeFi. Port3 also offers corresponding solutions to the problems encountered by Friend.tech.

Unlike Friend.tech, Port3 BQL Mining directly corresponds to the ultimate scenario of cryptocurrency – trading. BQL is a chain-based interactive language created by Port3, which enables automated and streamlined interactions on the chain, including trading. BQL Mining contains many trading pairs, and each trading pair can be easily exchanged with tokens by running BQL.

It is worth noting that Port3’s BQL Mining uses Port3 Aggregator, which generates transaction fees. All earned fees will be distributed to all users participating in the Swap and users holding BQL Key. Each BQL trading pair corresponds to a BQL Key, and users holding BQL Key (similar to Friend.tech’s Shares) can receive dividends.

This design has several highlights:

• BQL, as a new and Intent-centric way of interaction, greatly reduces the threshold for transactions

• Holding Shares (BQL Key) provides cash dividends, continuously injecting external value into the Key

• The Bonding Curve of BQL Key is flexibly configured, allowing adjustment of the base number during creation, accommodating more users

• BQL Key is implemented in the form of ERC-721, allowing free transfer between wallets

In terms of participation, after the BQL trading pair is released, the Sponsor (such as a KOL) can claim the trading pair and issue the Key for this BQL (similar to Friend.tech issuing its own Shares, which can receive 5% of Mint/Burn fees). After the issuance is completed, all users can purchase it. The most direct way for users to participate is to Mint BQL Key.

The Mint process of BQL Key is a Fair Launch, and the price rises along the Bonding Curve. Through the price curve, the change in price can be visually observed.

Users who successfully purchase BQL Key can enjoy the BQL pool dividends of that trading pair after each BQL Mining cycle ends. At the same time, BQL Key itself can also be bought and sold.

Annualized Yield of BQL Key Holdings

The above image shows two BQL trading pairs. In the direction of BNB → WBNB, a total of 35 Keys have been Minted, and the price has risen from 0 to 0.067 ETH. The trading volume of this pool for the current week is 297.48k, and the dividend available for distribution is 359 USDT. Since BQL earnings accumulate weekly, the final dividend per Key can reach 40 USDT, equivalent to 30% of the cost of 0.067 ETH. The return rate is quite high. If you enter at a price lower than the current price, the actual annualized yield will be even higher.

Each cycle, the platform will launch new BQL trading pairs, and the BQL Keys for these new pairs will be issued starting from 0. Therefore, purchasing BQL Keys in advance is a viable strategy. Additionally, increasing the trading volume for these BQL trading pairs will also increase the dividends for this pool.

Bonding Curve Provides Liquidity to NFTs

In the process of designing BQL Keys, we also gained a by-product – solving the liquidity problem of NFTs through Bonding Curve. Previously, various NFTs lacked price support and had very poor liquidity, relying on users bidding on the market place to facilitate transactions. Similar to Sudoswap, it introduced the concept of AMM exchange pools, solving some of the liquidity problems for NFTs, but not completely.

By combining NFTs with Bonding Curve, we can completely solve the liquidity problem of NFTs. Previously, all NFTs were minted by users and then funds were transferred to the issuer, relying on the issuer’s subsequent actions to give value to the NFTs. However, if we directly attach a Bonding Curve fund pool to the NFT, the NFT’s contract itself can achieve market-making and provide basic liquidity.

Implementing Bonding Curve on NFTs is not complex, as long as Shares are implemented as NFTs.

There are significant benefits to doing this:

• NFTs themselves can be reflected in users’ wallets, making it convenient for users to manage and potentially have more uses in the future

• NFTs themselves provide fund pool market-making, allowing users to mint and burn operations at any time based on the Bonding Curve

• Due to the significant price fluctuations of the Bonding Curve, users can autonomously trade via the marketplace to supplement the liquidity of the Bonding Curve

We recommend that future NFTs be implemented in this way. On one hand, it can avoid NFT issuers “running away” and ensure that users can always sell their NFTs. On the other hand, issuers can also earn fee income from it. This is a win-win situation, allowing NFT issuers to focus on giving value to NFTs, thereby achieving more trading volume and fee income.

Inspiration for BQL Keys from Hotspots

Because blockchain contracts can guarantee the balance of interests among all parties, it is particularly suitable for playing a role in the financial field. However, so far, various Ponzi schemes and hotspots have dominated the blockchain, and the number of actual application scenarios is not many. In order for blockchain to gain wider application, it must be continuously optimized in various scenarios, reduce the barriers to entry, and solve practical problems, so as to achieve large-scale adoption.

Various models and infrastructure of blockchain are gradually developing and evolving in each hotspot. Although hotspots will pass, the inspiration they provide can propel us to construct a more fair and reliable asset issuance method and a better distribution method. These two points are the main areas of focus in the development of blockchain so far, and they are also the key points that will be integrated into a larger narrative (AI+ IoT) in the future.

The innovation of BQL and BQL Key is largely inspired by hotspots like Friend.tech, but this type of innovation represents a new way of interaction from 0 to 1. It is gradually permeating the DeFi and NFT domains as an interactive catalyst. It has the potential to develop and connect with AI smart assistants, on-chain strategies, data-driven closed loops, and other areas. This is an exciting future of intelligence and automation and a new opportunity for blockchain to achieve widespread applications.

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