Tokenomic Model of Friend.Tech Social Platform: A Data-driven Analysis

Abstract

The Web3 social platform Friend.Tech, launched in August 2023, enables users to tokenize and trade their social influence. While quickly attracted 139 thousand users in one month, Friend.Tech’s economic model and business strategies face significant challenges. After conducting a qualitative analysis of this platform, we collected and analyzed relevant on-chain data, and found that the platform’s economic model generates early substantial returns for key opinion leaders (KOLs) but also restricts community size and stable earning potential, with 99.4% of accounts having fewer than 100 followers. Numerous speculative users were attracted to the platform, but only 22.1% of speculative returns were positive, and the trading frequency rapidly declined, with the average token holding period exceeding four days. The reliance on new users, combined with an inevitable decline in platform activity, indicates a less optimistic outlook for the sustainability of this economic model. The platform demonstrates a prominent level of transitivity and tighter social connections compared to existing social platforms. In conclusion, while Friend.Tech appears economically unsustainable, its social model exhibits unique characteristics and serves as a remarkable exploration for the development of Web3.