The next generation of Friend.tech? Avalanche’s Arena Sets Token Airdrop Plan

The Arena, a blockchain-based social token platform, said Wednesday that the cryptocurrency associated with its project will be launched within two weeks.

“Now it’s time to sink in” project presentation The Twitter post added that the ARENA token is scheduled to launch “the week of June 10th.”

Built on Avalanche, Arena allows users to trade “tickets” linked to individual Twitter accounts. Tickets, priced in Avalanche’s native AVAX token, grant holders benefits such as access to private chat rooms or viewing specific posts.

This project is similar to friend.tech in its attempt to integrate social media and decentralized finance in a seamless yet sticky way. Both projects under the SocialFi umbrella value users’ ability to influence or gain attention online.

Similar to the points-based rewards system popularized by NFT marketplace Blur, Arena user statistics will be tracked to determine final airdrop eligibility. This process takes into account aspects such as referrals, transactions, and general activity.

Airdrops, which reward early users and contributors of a cryptocurrency project with a portion of newly released tokens, can also be used as a way to generate interest in an emerging protocol. As of this writing, the breadth or scale of the Arena airdrop is unclear.

One difference between Arena and friend.tech is the introduction of a public feed that allows Arena users to post and view social posts without owning anything. In the public feed, users can also tip each other on various cryptocurrency posts. Of course, Avalanche-based assets are also possible, as well as some Solana meme coins.

As of this writing, Arena’s total locked value (TVL) is over 32,000 AVAX, which is worth approximately $1.1 million. This is said to be equivalent to one-tenth of the assets locked up in friend.tech, which has a TVL of $11 million. DefiLlame.

As friends.tech launched last summer on layer 2 network Base, its popularity grew, and the number of daily transactions exploded, surpassing 500,000 in September. However, as interest in friends.tech has waned, the protocol’s daily trading volume has reportedly surpassed 60,000 only twice so far this year. data On the sand dunes.

During friend.tech’s so-called V2 launch, which adds several new features, the project faced backlash due to the launch of the native FRIEND token. Some panicked and confused users reported problems claiming FRIEND tokens, with their value plummeting not long after its launch.

According to CoinGecko, since FRIEND debuted earlier this month, the cryptocurrency has not recovered from its initial price of $3.03. Instead, the coin has fallen 37% over the past two weeks, hovering around $1.08 on Thursday.

Although Arena aims for a relatively seamless user experience, the protocol has faced technical headwinds under a different name.

Previously known as Stars Arena, the project rebrand It came into its own in late 2023, not long after the protocol was hacked to obtain $2.9 million worth of Avalanche tokens. According to blockchain security company Halborn, the problem is Related Unidentified reentrancy vulnerability. (According to DipilamaIn the end, $2.34 million worth of funds were returned.)

Arena did not immediately respond to a request for comment. decryption.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.