Friend.tech’s Leaving From Base Hinted By Co-founder Causes Token Price To Drop Sharply

Key Points:

• Racer, co-founder of friend.tech, announced plans to leave Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base.
• The fallout of friend.tech’s leaving from Base caused the FRIEND token’s price to drop by over 25%.
• Friend.tech previously faced significant volatility following an airdrop earlier this month.

On May 26, Racer, the pseudonymous co-founder of the web3 social network friend.tech, announced plans to depart from Base, the layer-2 network developed by Coinbase, The Block first reported the news.

Friend.tech’s Leaving from Base Revealed by Co-founder

Racer took to X (formerly Twitter) to issue the friend.tech’s leaving from Base: “System design bounty: If you can figure out a way to migrate friendtech off of Base without causing major issues for users, and it works well enough that we decide to use it, we will pay you $200K.”

Racer disclosed tensions between friend.tech and Base, citing a fallout with Farcaster investors who misunderstood their initiative, leading to strained relations and isolation within the Base community. His posts detailing these issues were later deleted, leaving uncertainty about his future actions, including whether he might deactivate his account.

Jesse Pollak, Coinbase’s head of protocol, responded to the controversy, expressing his regret over friend.tech’s leaving from Base and Ethereum. Pollak stated, “I’ll be sad if the team decides to leave Base, but I also respect and will support whatever path they choose – that’s the beauty of the decentralized, onchain economy.”

FRIEND Token Price Plummets Following Migration Announcement

The fallout from Racer’s announcement caused a significant drop in the price of friend.tech’s FRIEND token, which plummeted by over 25%. Friend.tech, a notable SocialFi project, launched in August 2023 and gained attention for its innovative approach of linking token sales (called keys) to users’ X accounts with ETH on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base. These keys grant unique privileges with influencers.

Earlier in the month, friend.tech had announced an airdrop for users, which initially led to a sell-off. At one point, FRIEND’s price had dropped over 90% post-airdrop but saw a rapid recovery.