Criticism of Friend.tech’s High Speculation: Ethereum Founder Optimistic about Farcaster and Lens Sustaining for a Year.

Dragonfly Capital partner Haseeb Qureshi recently tweeted about the rise and fall of social app Friend.tech (FT) in just four months, which drew a response from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Dragonfly Partner: Social Finance (FT) Was Short-Lived

Haseeb Qureshi expressed his confusion, suggesting that the pricing curve seemed to be the reason for FT’s demise. The pricing curve caused a rapid increase in Key for all Room Owners, but it also brought about a downward spiral. Qureshi wondered how the FT team designed it and what lessons everyone learned from it.

DeFi researcher Ignas pointed out in the comments under Haseeb Qureshi’s tweet that the narrative of Social Finance (SocialFi) rose and gradually disappeared in August and September of last year, similar to how the hype around Bitcoin ETF gradually disappeared after its official launch. This shows that the “crypto narrative” changes very quickly.

This issue also prompted a response from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Understanding Friend.tech’s Economic Model with Mathematics: Finding the Best Solution for the SocialFi Price Curve

Vitalik Buterin responded by saying that lousy GameFi projects are replacing the fun of gaming with financial speculation. Blockchain games should be just as fun as traditional games, and he has mentioned this many times before. He believes that similar situations also occur in crypto social applications. Vitalik also predicted that decentralized social protocols like Farcaster and Lens Protocol will not disappear in just four months like FT; they may even last for a year.

Lens Protocol V2, a decentralized community platform, has been launched with the addition of paid posting functionality.

Haseeb Qureshi replied to Vitalik, agreeing with his perspective but also believing that there are many lessons to be learned besides the equation of “social + financial speculation = lousy.” He also questioned whether it is too early to dismiss social concepts associated with financial speculation because most ideas require multiple attempts to be realized.

Dragonfly
Friend.tech
GameFi
Haseeb Qureshi
SocialFi