🤝 Print ETH with Friends (Tech)

🗞 Market commentary.

Yo Fren,

What do you get when you combine the greatest technological revolution and your BFF’s?

Yeah, you’re one of us if you said “getting rugged in the casino” BUT today it’s all about good frens making good tech.

What started out as a dud over on Base has now given influencers the power of friendship which is now being valued in magical internet beans. This also feels like what Twitter’s (X) tipping service should have been.

Friend Tech is the socialfi narrative that, according to DeFiLlama, is absolutely printing as daily fees (at the time of writing) hit $1.68m overtaking both His Excellency Justin Sun’s unlimited money printer on TRON and Liquid Staking giant Lido.

A Paradigm-backed project that has inspired competition between Twitter’s top influencers as the race for the top spot on the leaderboard continues. Rollbit level shiller’ry but for your friends, because friends buy shares and HODL.

The Friend Tech story and its theoretical potential is one that might spark socialfi innovation that goes beyond a “decentralised Twitter” look-a-like. Either that, or it ends in tears as SEC comes knocking as users become securities and influencers pump their friendship circle giving NFA financial advice to drive the prices higher.

And remember… frens dont rug frens we HODL for the moon (obviously NFA, DYOR)

🤓 In today’s email.

• Degen corner. Parabolic circle of friends

• DeFi insights. 7 hot defi insights

• ICYMI. Podcast: GMX V2 w/ coinflipcanada and research Lybra V2 & Unstoppable Defi

• Top Tweets. TheFlowHorse raises money for All Hands and Hearts

• And finally. Jackson Hole 2.0, another $1.25 trillion wipeout?

🔥 Degen corner.

Parabolic circle of friends

This newsletter honestly isn't sponsored or affiliated with Friend Tech (but if you do want to send us a Rollbit-like sponsorship deal then our DMs are open) but it is THE flavour of the month.

The Friend Tech transactions chart looks like your typical microcap pump ‘n’ dump chart that turned out to actually be gud tech as crypto Twitter accepted, or at least understood, how much of a money printing machine this can be IF you have a loyal circle of friends.

With over 90,671 friends using the app and a fee generation that is rivalling Lido, in the short term at least, it doesn’t seem like there is much to slow this parabolic movement. As other non-crypto ecosystems and communities begin onboarding Friend Tech could end up being 2023’s best ponzi.

I’ll admit though, I was wrong as real-world gamefi gamers might just be the very people that influence a new wave of degenerates to crypto, or at least into socialfi on Base. It’s cool to see NBA ball’ers like Grayson Allen sign up but it’ll be the YouTube/Twitch superstars that have a cult-like following of gamers who will move the needle most. FaZe Banks, Founder of the 44-time esports champion FaZe Clan might just be starting it off as he ranks in the top 3.

Perps dexes have been acting fast as Hyperliquid and Aevo have both listed Friend-Perps because going 50x on your friends just makes sense. But the real test of friendship would be to list individualised [insert influencer name]-perps to see who the most loved and loathed.

50x short on Bitboy you say?!

In closing, can this Friend Tech social experience become a real thing? Can it actually become mainstream? Or is it just another gud ponzi for the degenerates to make some ramen money on before rotating, and getting rugged, into the next narrative?

👀 DeFi insights.

The important bits.

• Bumper Finance - Early incentives program goes live - read

• Hyperliquid - Launch Friends Tech perps - read

• Perpy Finance - The “flawless copy trading” protocol Spectre update launches Sept 4th - read 

• Shares Finance - A Friend Tech competitor launches whitepaper - read

• ThorChain - Lending goes live - read

• Velocimeter - Wraps Friend Tech influencer tokens ready to be traded including 0xSisyphus, icebergy_, 0xfoobar and fan favourite adamscochran - read

• Yolo Nolo - Has discord integration across 24 chains - read

📰 DeFi news.

Even more important bits.

• Coinbase acquires stake in Circle with plans to launch USDC across 6 new chains - read

• Shib dev team to “restart” Shibarium after the botched launch - read

• Mark Cuban says “huge mistake” as NFT marketplace Opensea rolls out optional royalty fees for upcoming collections - read

• New Bitcoin whale acquires $3bn BTC in 3 months, speculators speculating Blackrock? - read

• Vitalik sends $1M ETH to Coinbase but is he bridging to Base to ape microcaps? - read 

🫠 ICYMI.

Life gets busy so here’s what you’ve missed.

Podcast: GMX V2 Explained an Interview With Coinflipcanada

Listen & Watch.

Now GMX V2 is rolling out with all new features including the option to trade BTC, ETH, SOL, DOGE, XRP, LTC, LINK, UNI and other tokens in the near future. Chainlink's low latency oracles will provide a much better trading environment for the users of this impressive and novel DEX.

Tune in on Spotify | YouTube | Twitter →

Lybra V2: Fireside Q&A with the Lybra Team.

Interview.

This fireside chat session follows a question-and-answer format to cut across the experience of the team so far, asking unique questions about v2, and important conversations surrounding user satisfaction and security. 

Read more →

Providing Liquidity on Unstoppable: Everything You Need To Know

Research.

The Unstoppable DEX allows users to provide single-sided liquidity for Margin DEX trades. This mechanism is vastly different from traditional margin DEX platforms that have a shared liquidity pool against which traders trade. 

Read more →

🐥 Top tweets.

To save you doom scrolling.

jedi blocmates, Ben should probably have subscribed to the newsletter

GiganticRebirth, GCR called it 18 months ago

TheFlowHorse, donating all Friend Tech fees to a good cause

🦍 And finally…

Jackson Hole 2.0 takes place on August 24-26th. Last year J Powell wiped out over $1.25 Trillion United States dollars from the stock market in just 8 minutes. We’ll be watching for what Powell says and attempt to read between the lines but it’s likely he will re-iterate “data dependency” and “likely to be no rate cuts this year.”

My question is “Has enough blood been spilt?” or do we need more people to be pushed out of employment in an attempt to achieve this magical 2% number?

Eyes peeled degens, market-moving news likely to come out this week.

🤝 A final word.

A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...

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