Friend.tech (FRIEND) Suffers Major Drop After Team Transfers Control of Smart Contracts to Ethereum’s Null Address

NAIROBI (CoinChapter.com) — Friend.tech's native token, FRIEND, suffered a major drop after the team transferred control of its smart contracts

Friend.tech's native token (FRIEND) took a hit after the team transferred control of its smart contracts to Ethereum's null address on Sept. 8. The move, designed to prevent changes to fees or functionality, caused the token price to fall 28%, reaching a low of $0.057. At the time of writing, the token has rebounded by 21%, though it remains well below its pre-announcement value of $0.80995.

Friend.tech confirmed on Discord that the transfer would prevent any future adjustments, locking the smart contracts irrevocably.

The platform's market cap also dropped sharply, settling at $6.66 million, down from $233.6 million shortly after launch. DefiLlama reported a 93.4% drop in total value locked (TVL), which fell from $52 million in October 2023 to $3.44 million.

Crypto trader Machi Big Brother reportedly lost $16 million following the token's price collapse. He spent 5.2K ETH ($16.7 million) to buy 11.1 million FRIEND tokens, now worth only $0.7 million after the price plunge.

Friend.tech's Token Earnings in Sharp Decline Since May

Following its launch, Friend.tech quickly made waves, with its token earnings briefly surpassing Ethereum's. At its peak, one of the platform's core “keys” was valued at 8.9 ETH, nearly $14,500, underscoring the early excitement around its social media tokenization model.

However, things took a downturn in May when co-founder Racer hinted at leaving the Base blockchain in a series of Discord posts, only to delete them later. This move confused the community and led to questions about the platform’s direction. The fallout was swift—FRIEND token prices plunged, and users began to lose confidence in the platform's long-term potential.

Despite launching a V2 protocol to reinvigorate activity, the platform's earnings continued to slide. By June, average daily protocol fees dropped to just $60,000, a steep decline from earlier days.

Serpin Taxt, CEO of Ethos, stated that Friend.tech's brand had lost value. While building something new could generate revenue, he doubted the platform could regain enough support. He also considered acquiring Friend.tech's technology, but the irreversible admin transfer was impossible.