Popular Crypto Social Media Platform Gives Up Control Of Its Smart Contracts

The token for the crypto social media platform known as friend.tech has significantly declined after its team transferred the administration and ownership of its smart contracts to a null Ethereum (ETH) address, effectively surrendering all control.

This transfer occurred on September 8th, with friend.tech stating on X that it was done to prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future. Following the transfer, the aforementioned token, $FRIEND, fell nearly 26% in the past 24 hours to $0.067, as reported by CoinGecko.

The main reason why this is so surprising is because many crypto-focused companies would usually go above and beyond to always maintain control of their smart contracts, as was the case with Cardano (ADA) in 2023.

An Unexpected Turn Of Events

The null address serves as a burn address designed to permanently destroy tokens, making any assets sent to it irretrievable. Serpin Taxt, associated with the blockchain reputation protocol Ethos, remarked on X that the transfer marked the end of an era and expressed surprise at how events unfolded.

This update comes three months after friend.tech announced plans to develop its own blockchain, Friendchain, a move that left many in the community uncertain about the future of the protocol. Confusion increased when their official X account deleted its announcement post.

Growing Pains

Tensions between the team and users grew when numerous issues arose with the much-anticipated $FRIEND airdrop in early May. Initially, the token reached a market cap of $233.6 million within the first four days of its launch, but it has now dropped to $6.3 million.

The total value locked (TVL) on friend.tech has also decreased dramatically. After experiencing an all-time high of $52 million in early October 2023. It recently fell to under $3.5 million, according to DefiLlama. Since August 2023, both daily fees earned by the protocol and FRIEND trading volume have also consistently been below $1,000.