Two-tier reversal, friend.tech still agreed for you to be friends with the imitation platform.

Friend.tech still agreed for you to be friends with the imitation platform despite the two-tier reversal.

A few weeks ago, friend.tech emerged and quickly attracted the attention of various cryptocurrency influencers and media outlets.

A few weeks later, as we eagerly analyzed the viral growth and success of friend.tech, we couldn’t help but wonder – what core technologies should one master to thrive in the realm of Web3 social networks?

Today, friend.tech gave us a lesson on the core technology of making friends in the form of “you can’t be friends with my competitors”.

A few hours ago, friend.tech astutely sniffed out a common tactic in the crypto world: when a project becomes phenomenally successful, countless copycats will emerge. Whether out of fear or proactive prevention, friend.tech’s official Twitter account made the following statement:

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“To ensure that loyal users receive fair rewards during our testing period, users who turn to forks and copycats will automatically be selected to stop earning points and forfeit existing points. They will still be able to use the application normally.”

Furthermore, the accompanying tweet image was quite thought-provoking, with money and tears, the meaning was self-evident.

The meaning of this statement is clear – you can use various copycats, but once you do, you won’t be able to earn rewards points from me.

Since friend.tech is built on top of existing Twitter accounts and social networks, it can relatively easily identify these “disloyal users” who bind their Twitter accounts to other copycat projects and disqualify them from earning rewards points.

In contrast to the whitelist for various project airdrops, this statement is essentially a blacklist that excludes certain users from receiving rewards.

Disloyalty equals no rewards. It’s a direct yet somewhat arbitrary logic.

Two-tier reversal.

There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.

After friend.tech released this statement, prominent figure Cobie made a humorous and accurate comment in the comment section, providing a definition:

“Loyalty (noun), generally refers to strong support and loyalty, often due to the threat of economic consequences.”

In other words, Cobie’s implication is that friend.tech is using economic incentives to threaten users, forcing them to refrain from using other copycats and not take advantage of other project benefits, all under the negative expectation of potential loss of airdrop rewards.

In the world of crypto projects, the first place often carries extremely high profit expectations.

As friend.tech is the project that recently fired the first shot in socialfi, users must make a trade-off: participate in other copycat projects for potentially higher overall profits, or solely focus on friend.tech for higher returns?

However, forcing users to make a 2-in-1 choice seems inherently problematic.

The spirit of encryption emphasizes openness and decentralization (although there are also those who claim to be decentralized). Assets, users, and protocols can often flow freely. It is not common in the industry to strongly oppose the use of competitors and cancel rewards.

At the same time, the encryption community also emphasizes consensus. When there is good news, everyone can rush to it, but if it annoys everyone, they can also disperse.

Friend.tech’s previous statement was inevitably criticized by users, and if various influential figures join the chorus, the negative impact caused by social media cannot be ignored.

Therefore, 5 hours after Friend.tech released its first statement, a letter of apology from its founder, Racer, followed:

He admitted that his previous remarks about restricting users from using clone and counterfeit versions of the application were driven by fear and zero-sum thinking.

He admitted that he was afraid of disappointing others, afraid that his golden age had passed, and afraid that he was not suitable for this position. This fear led him to exhibit zero-sum thinking in his previous statement, advising everyone not to use other products.

He called this a foolish statement, telling friends not to enjoy themselves and making potential partners feel that he only saw them as competitors. He expressed deep apologies for this, as it contradicts the open culture of the encryption field.

This public letter of apology expresses the team’s previous improper considerations, where fear prevailed over reason, leading to this strategy.

From my perspective, the fact that this public letter was released actually shows that reason prevailed over fear because there is no implicit message in the letter:

“If we continue like this, our project will be played out and our interests will be affected.”

Whether it is out of consideration for soothing emotions or genuine sincerity, this two-level reversal at least indicates the following issues:

• Team or founders are not very crypto native, otherwise they would not make such mistakes;
• The team lacks judgment in public relations and marketing;
• Governance and business thinking issues cannot be solved by simply web3-ifying the product.

Everyone in the world is driven by self-interest, and everyone is rushing for profit. If you want to show sincerity and retain consensus that has already been cracked, you might as well have another round of airdrops to share the benefits with everyone and put an end to this two-level reversal with a brilliant ending.

Nothing New in Web3?

This monopolistic thinking of Friend.tech is actually nothing new, and it can be traced back in the long history of the Internet.

More than 20 years ago, a war between 360 and QQ made headlines in various media outlets. The competition between them may no longer be remembered by younger readers.

In 2010, two major software companies in China, Qihoo and Tencent, accused each other of unfair competition. In September 2010, Qihoo released 360 Privacy Protector and 360 QQ Bodyguard targeting Tencent QQ, claiming that they could protect the privacy and online security of QQ users. On November 3rd, Tencent announced that QQ software would not be able to run on computers with 360 software installed.

“Either use me or use it.” In the internet 20 years ago, companies forced users to choose between QQ and 360 based on user habits and social needs;

In the web3 era 20 years later, projects force users to make choices based on airdrop expectations and rewards.

In the more greedy and chaotic web3, only children make choices, and of course, all wool party members want everything. As long as there is public accessible wool, there is no reason not to take both A and B.

Therefore, friend.tech quickly realized the magic of web3 after the impulse:

In web3, monopolies cannot be created through mandatory terms, but through consensus of value.

BTC and ETH are no exception, in the end, we still need to be open and allow everyone to choose friends based on mutual interests and time.

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