{"investigation":{"slug":"friend-tech","entity_name":"Friend Tech","trust_score":4,"severity_base":null,"score_modifier":0,"confidence":1,"status":"published","content_type":"investigation","summary":"Friend.tech was a SocialFi application launched on Coinbase's Base L2 in August 2023 that allowed users to buy and sell tokenized 'keys' (shares) of social media influencers. The platform suffered a wave of SIM-swap attacks draining at least 343 ETH from users, exposed wallet addresses of 101,000 users via an API data breach, launched its FRIEND token in May 2024 which collapsed 98% within months, and was ultimately abandoned by its pseudonymous founders in September 2024 after they extracted approximately $44 million in protocol fees.","sections":[{"content":"Friend.tech launched on August 10, 2023, as a decentralized social finance (SocialFi) application built on Base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network. The platform was developed by two pseudonymous founders known as 0xRacerAlt (Racer) and shrimppepe (Shrimp), who had previously operated Stealcam, a Web3 NFT platform. Friend.tech's core mechanic allowed users to buy and sell 'keys' (initially called 'shares') tied to individual Twitter/X accounts. Purchasing keys granted access to a private chat room with the associated creator, with key prices determined by an algorithmic bonding curve that increased with each purchase. The platform received seed funding from prominent crypto venture firm Paradigm in August 2023. Within two weeks of launch, Friend.tech reportedly gained over 100,000 users and generated approximately $25 million in activity. By early October 2023, the platform had surpassed $50 million in total value locked (TVL) and generated over 10,000 ETH in cumulative protocol revenue. The protocol charged a 10% fee on all key transactions, split equally between the protocol and the key subject.","heading":"Platform Overview and Launch","sources":[],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"On approximately August 21, 2023, Banteg, a core contributor to the Yearn Finance DeFi project, published a repository on GitHub containing scraped data from Friend.tech's public API. The dataset exposed the Base wallet addresses and corresponding Twitter/X usernames of approximately 101,183 users. The exposure was made possible because Friend.tech's API did not restrict access to the mapping between wallet addresses and social media identities, effectively de-anonymizing users who had assumed their on-chain activity would remain pseudonymous. Friend.tech disputed the characterization as a breach, stating the information was sourced from their public API and compared it to viewing a public Twitter feed. The database was subsequently taken down following doxxing concerns raised by security researchers and the broader community. The incident significantly increased the risk profile for affected users, as the linkage of wallet addresses to real-world social identities enabled targeted phishing, social engineering, and SIM-swap attacks.","heading":"Data Breach — 101,000 User Wallet Addresses Exposed","sources":[],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"Beginning in early October 2023, Friend.tech users were subjected to a sustained wave of SIM-swap attacks. In a SIM-swap attack, a malicious actor socially engineers a mobile carrier into transferring the victim's phone number to an attacker-controlled SIM card, then uses that number to bypass SMS-based two-factor authentication and gain access to linked accounts. Because Friend.tech used phone numbers as a primary authentication vector, successful SIM swaps could grant attackers full control over a user's Friend.tech account and associated funds. On-chain investigator ZachXBT documented that a single attacker stole approximately 234 ETH (roughly $385,000) within a 24-hour period by SIM-swapping four Friend.tech users in early October 2023. A separate cluster of attacks attributed to additional threat actors resulted in at least 109 ETH drained from four more users in the same week. Individual documented victims included users froggie.eth (approximately 20 ETH), darengb (22 ETH), and digging4doge (approximately 60 ETH via phishing). Total documented losses from the October 2023 attack wave exceeded 343 ETH. Crypto investment firm Manifold Trading estimated that if one-third of Friend.tech accounts were linked to phone numbers, as much as $20 million in user funds could be at risk from SIM-swap exploits across the platform. In response to the attacks, Friend.tech introduced an optional feature allowing users to change their login method away from phone numbers, but this was not enabled by default and adoption was limited.","heading":"SIM-Swap Attack Wave — At Least 343 ETH Stolen","sources":[],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"On May 3, 2024, Friend.tech launched its native FRIEND token simultaneously with a platform upgrade dubbed version 2, which introduced a 'Money Club' feature. The token was distributed via airdrop to existing platform users. Trading began with the token briefly reaching a high of approximately $3.26, before collapsing to $2.50 within hours of launch — a decline of over 90% from early trading highs reported by some sources as reaching $169 in thin early markets. The launch was marred by multiple failures: technical glitches prevented many users from claiming their airdropped tokens through the Money Club feature; the distribution was criticized as inequitable, with leading creators receiving a disproportionately large share while average users received approximately 10 times less than anticipated; and a large holder liquidated over 55,000 FRIEND tokens shortly after the airdrop, driving the price down an additional 52.5%. Bloomberg reported the token had crashed 98% from its launch price within weeks. By September 2024, the FRIEND token had declined approximately 98% since its May 2024 launch and was trading below $0.06.","heading":"FRIEND Token Launch and Collapse","sources":[],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"On approximately September 9, 2024, the Friend.tech team announced that it had transferred administrative and ownership rights over the protocol's smart contracts to a null (burn) address — an irreversible action that permanently removed the team's ability to upgrade, modify, or collect fees from the contracts. This followed a catastrophic decline in platform metrics: total deposits had fallen from a peak of approximately $52 million in October 2023 to just $4 million by September 2024, a 92% contraction; daily active users had declined to single digits; and daily protocol fee revenue had dropped from approximately $2 million at peak to less than $100. The team stated this was not a shutdown but rather a transfer of control to the community. However, Twitter/X accounts belonging to the pseudonymous founders Racer and Shrimp were subsequently deleted or made private, with no further public communication. DL News reported that the team collectively extracted approximately $44 million — roughly half of the $90 million in total protocol fees generated since launch — before abandoning the project. The FRIEND token dropped an additional 21-30% on the announcement of the contract renunciation. The venture investors Paradigm and Notation Capital, who had backed the seed round, did not make public statements about the abandonment.","heading":"Team Abandonment and Protocol Renunciation","sources":[],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"The primary Friend.tech shares/keys trading contract on Base is deployed at address 0xCF205808Ed36593aa40a44F10c7f7C2F67d4A4d4, as listed on BaseScan. The FRIEND ERC-20 token contract on Base is deployed at address 0x0bd4887f7d41b35cd75dff9ffee2856106f86670, also verifiable on BaseScan. A historical Friend.tech token reference on the Ethereum mainnet is listed at 0xfea0f46815Ec3D010b85d11510C4c1D600758ff9 on Ethplorer. As of September 2024, administrative control of the core protocol contracts was transferred to a null address, meaning no party retains upgrade or fee-collection rights. The protocol technically remains operational on-chain in its final state.","heading":"On-Chain Contract Addresses","sources":[],"severity":"medium"},{"content":"On-chain investigator ZachXBT was among the first public researchers to document and amplify the Friend.tech SIM-swap attacks in October 2023, publishing findings identifying the attacker's on-chain activity and the specific amounts stolen from individual victims. ZachXBT's reporting on the 234 ETH theft in a single 24-hour period drew significant media attention and placed pressure on the Friend.tech team to respond with security improvements. ZachXBT has flagged Friend.tech as a platform of concern in the context of the broader social engineering and SIM-swap threat landscape targeting crypto users. Manifold Trading issued separate public warnings estimating $20 million in systemic risk from the platform's phone-number authentication design. The platform's combination of pseudonymous founders, phone-number-linked authentication, public API exposure of wallet-social identity mappings, and subsequent token launch mechanics drew sustained criticism from security researchers throughout its operational lifespan.","heading":"ZachXBT Flagging and Community Warnings","sources":[],"severity":"medium"}],"timeline":[{"date":"2023-05-19","event":"Friend.tech completes seed funding round with participation from Paradigm.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.coincarp.com/fundraising/friendtech-seed/"},{"date":"2023-08-10","event":"Friend.tech officially launches on Base (Coinbase's Ethereum L2), created by pseudonymous founders 0xRacerAlt and shrimppepe.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.coingecko.com/learn/friend-tech-social-app-base"},{"date":"2023-08-18","event":"Paradigm confirms participation in Friend.tech seed investment round.","source":"","source_url":"https://cryptorank.io/news/feed/35b52-friend-tech-secures-seed-round-funding"},{"date":"2023-08-21","event":"Banteg (Yearn Finance contributor) publishes scraped Friend.tech API data on GitHub, exposing wallet addresses and Twitter usernames of approximately 101,183 users. Friend.tech disputes the characterization as a breach.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/246529/friendtech-leaked-database-ethereum-addresses"},{"date":"2023-10-02","event":"Friend.tech surpasses $50 million TVL and 10,000 ETH in cumulative protocol revenue.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.cryptotimes.io/2023/10/02/friend-tech-surpasses-50m-tvl-reaches-10000-eth-in-revenue/"},{"date":"2023-10-03","event":"First wave of SIM-swap attacks publicly reported; approximately 109 ETH drained from four Friend.tech users.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/10/03/friendtech-users-targeted-by-sim-swap-attack-several-ether-drained"},{"date":"2023-10-05","event":"ZachXBT documents a single attacker stealing 234 ETH (~$385,000) within 24 hours via SIM-swapping four Friend.tech users. Total documented SIM-swap losses exceed 343 ETH.","source":"","source_url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/friend-tech-sim-swap-attacks-continue-four-targeted"},{"date":"2023-10-05","event":"Friend.tech introduces optional feature allowing users to change their login method away from phone numbers in response to SIM-swap attacks.","source":"","source_url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/friendtech-adds-security-password-feature-amid-sim-swap-attacks"},{"date":"2024-05-03","event":"Friend.tech launches FRIEND token via airdrop alongside platform version 2 and Money Club feature. Token briefly trades above $3 before collapsing 90%+ within hours. Bloomberg reports 98% decline from launch.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/05/03/friendtechs-native-token-tanks-to-25-after-debut"},{"date":"2024-09-09","event":"Friend.tech team transfers admin and ownership rights of all protocol smart contracts to a null address, permanently revoking the ability to upgrade or collect fees. FRIEND token drops 21-30% on the news.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/friend-tech-shuts-down-after-revenue-and-users-plummet/"},{"date":"2024-09-09","event":"DL News reports founders extracted approximately $44 million (half of ~$90 million in total protocol fees) before abandoning the project. Founder Twitter accounts deleted or made private.","source":"","source_url":"https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/friend-tech-shuts-down-after-revenue-and-users-plummet/"}],"sources_used":[],"source_tags":["etherscan","zachxbt"],"addresses":[],"reviewed":false,"reviewed_by":null,"model_used":"claude-sonnet","created_at":"2026-05-04T16:05:00.260215+00:00","updated_at":"2026-08-29T01:35:53.804+00:00"}}