Users are able to buy “keys” of other users X (Twitter) accounts. By owning a “key” the user gets access to a private chat with the person whose “key” one owns. When a “key” of a users account is traded the user earns a commission (supply-side fees).

friend.tech is a crypto native social media application built on Base. friend.tech was founded by pseudonymous developers known as Racer and Shrimp and launched in 2023.

friend.tech team and investors own the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total trading volume (revenue). friend.tech’s investors include Paradigm.

twitter

website

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friend.tech

# friend.tech Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

Friend.tech expenses represent the total token incentives paid out by the protocol to users or ecosystem participants. This metric measures the cost of any token-based rewards, subsidies, or incentive programs operated by the protocol. Currently, Friend.tech does not operate any token incentive programs, so all expense values are zero across all time periods. The metric maintains a consistent daily time series structure to support potential future incentive programs.

## 2. Data sources

The expenses calculation relies on the following data sources:
- **Base blockchain event logs**: Friend.tech V1 `Trade` events and V2 `Buy`/`Sell` events from club trading contracts
- **Base blockchain function calls**: Protocol fee and best friend fee update transactions via `changeProtocolFee` and `changeBestFriendFee` functions
- **Base blockchain transaction records**: Transaction metadata including sender addresses and timestamps
- **End-of-day price feeds**: Token price data from CoinGecko for FRIEND token and standard price feeds for WETH
- **Time series structure**: Daily timestamp framework derived from the protocol's fee generation activity

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Time series foundation
- **Purpose**: Establish the daily timestamp structure for the expenses metric
- **Logic**: The time series structure is derived from Friend.tech's fee-generating activity across both V1 (creator key trading) and V2 (club trading) versions. This ensures expenses data aligns with periods of actual protocol activity. The timestamps are aggregated to daily boundaries and span both the Ethereum chain (for V1 data) and Base chain (for V2 data), though the final output is standardized to Base chain reporting.
- **Key fields**: Daily `timestamp` boundaries, `timestamp_grain` set to 'day', `chain_id` for blockchain identification, and `product_id` for protocol version tracking

### Component B: Token incentives calculation  
- **Purpose**: Calculate the actual token incentive amounts distributed by the protocol
- **Logic**: Token incentives are currently hardcoded to zero for all time periods, indicating that Friend.tech does not operate active token reward programs. The calculation takes the time structure from the fees calculation and applies a constant value of 0 to the `token_incentives` field for every timestamp and chain combination. This approach maintains data consistency and allows for easy modification if future incentive programs are implemented.
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` set to 0, `timestamp` and `chain_id` inherited from the fee structure

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The token incentives value (0) is directly mapped to the `expenses` field without any additional calculations or transformations
- **Currency conversion**: No USD conversion is needed since all values are zero
- **Time aggregation**: Data is maintained at daily granularity with forward-filling to ensure no gaps in the time series
- **Final calculation**: Expenses equal token incentives, which are currently 0 for all time periods. The metric uses a 'fill_zeros' strategy to populate any missing dates with zero values, ensuring complete time series coverage from the protocol's launch through the present day.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

friend.techFRIEND

Expenses

Expenses

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