Two levels of reversal, friend.tech still agreed to be friends with you and the imitation plate.

Two levels of reversal, friend.tech still agreed to be friends with you and the imitation plate.

There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.

A few weeks ago, friend.tech emerged out of nowhere and quickly caught the attention of various crypto influencers and media.

A few weeks later, as we were happy to analyze the viral growth and success of friend.tech, we couldn’t help but generalize the principles to other social platforms in the web3 space. What core technologies should one master to excel in social interactions in the web3 world?

Today, friend.tech gave us a lesson. The core technology of making friends (“friend”) lies in the principle that “you cannot be friends with my competitors.”

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A few hours ago, friend.tech keenly detected the old tricks in the crypto world: when a project becomes a phenomenon, countless imitations will emerge. Out of fear or prevention, friend.tech’s official Twitter account released the following statement:

“To ensure that loyal users receive fair rewards during our testing period, users who turn to forks and imitations will automatically choose not to earn points and give up existing points. They will still be able to use the application normally.”

In addition, the accompanying image in the tweet is striking, with money and tears, the meaning is self-evident.

The meaning of this statement is clear: you can use various imitations, but once you use them, you will no longer be able to earn rewards points from me.

Since friend.tech is built on the existing Twitter accounts and social networks, it is relatively easy for friend.tech to identify these “disloyal users” by recognizing the same Twitter account being used for other imitations, and disqualify them from receiving reward points.

Compared to the whitelist for various project airdrops, this statement is actually a blacklist that excludes certain users from receiving airdrops.

Disloyalty = No rewards. A direct yet somewhat arbitrary logic.

Two-tier reversal

There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.

After friend.tech released this statement, the big shot Cobie made a humorous yet accurate comment in the comment section, offering an explanation:

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

In other words, Cobie is implying that friend.tech is using economic interests to threaten users, forcing them to avoid using other imitations due to the negative expectation of airdrop points being revoked.

In the crypto world, the top project often has high profit expectations.

Since friend.tech is the first project to kickstart socialfi, users have to weigh the options: whether participating in multiple imitations for higher overall profits, or focusing on friend.tech for higher profits.

Forcing users to make a 2-in-1 choice itself seems to be inappropriate.

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

At the same time, the encryption community also emphasizes consensus. One kind of good news can make everyone rush in, but if it annoys everyone, it can also disperse everyone.

The previous statement from friend.tech is obviously inevitable to be criticized by users, and if there are various influential figures leading the way, the negative impact caused by social media cannot be ignored.

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

He admitted that his previous comments limiting users from using cloned and counterfeit versions of applications were out of fear and zero-sum thinking.

He said 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 display zero-sum thinking in his previous statement, advising everyone not to use other products.

He called this a stupid statement, telling friends not to enjoy themselves and making potential partners think that he only regards them as competitors. He expressed deep apologies for this, as it goes against the open culture of the encryption field.

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

And personally, I think the fact that this open letter can be sent out actually shows that reason has prevailed over fear, because there is no implicit meaning written in the letter:

“If we continue like this, our project will be played out in the midst of condemnation, and our interests will be harmed.”

Whether it is out of consideration for appeasing emotions or sincere feelings, this two-level reversal at least illustrates the following issues:

• The team or founder is not very crypto-native, which is why they made this mistake;

• The team lacks judgment in public relations and marketing;

• Governance and business thinking are issues that cannot be solved simply by making the product web3.

In the world, everyone is motivated by their own interests, and if you want to show sincerity and retain consensus that already has cracks, you might as well have another round of airdrops where everyone benefits, and draw a wonderful ending to this two-level reversal.

Nothing new in Web3?

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

More than 20 years ago, a 3Q war exploded in various media outlets. The competition between 360 and QQ was a big drama, but younger readers may have no impression of it.

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

“Either use me or use it.” 20 years ago, Internet companies forced users to choose between QQ and 360 by leveraging user habits and social needs;

20 years later in Web3, projects force users to choose through airdrops and rewards.

In the more greedy and disorderly Web3, only children make choices, and of course, all the bounty hunters want everything. As long as there is accessible bounty, there is no reason not to grab 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.

The same goes for BTC and ETH. In the end, we still need to be open and allow everyone to choose friendship based on common interests and time.

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