{"id":159344,"date":"2023-09-20T16:20:11","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T10:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/?p=159344"},"modified":"2023-09-20T16:20:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T10:50:11","slug":"bitcoin-gets-its-own-take-on-social-app-friend-tech-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/bitcoin-gets-its-own-take-on-social-app-friend-tech-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin Gets Its Own Take on Social App Friend.tech – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After a 48-hour coding sprint, a <\/span>Friend.tech<\/span><\/a> look-alike dubbed Alpha launched on top of Bitcoin this weekend, bringing a social token experience to users of the venerated blockchain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Friend.tech\u2014which is built on Ethereum scaling network Base and saw a flurry of activity last month (and a recent revival)\u2014Alpha is a decentralized social network protocol that lets users <\/span>tokenize<\/span><\/a> and monetize their online presence and content via tokens.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, people can buy tokens tied to individual creators that rise or fall in price, and can be used to gate access to exclusive content. It\u2019s another incarnation of the \u201csocial token\u201d concept, and social finance projects like these are often billed as being a way to bring new users into the crypto space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After the recent Friend.tech surge, pseudonymous Alpha founder <\/span>Punk3700<\/span><\/a> described his Bitcoin-based platform to <\/span>Decrypt<\/span><\/i> as \u201cthe next big leap in the world of social finance.\u201d Despite building it in a weekend, he said the project \u201caims to bring a luxurious and exclusive experience to social interactions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time of writing, new users are joining the network every few minutes, many of which amass tens or even hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Punk3700 is also one of the core members behind <\/span>New Bitcoin City<\/span><\/a>, an ecosystem that is dabbling in art, on-chain <\/span>gaming<\/span><\/a>, decentralized finance (DeFi), and AI as a way to \u201cexplore Bitcoin beyond just a currency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Alpha is the collective’s latest development\u2014but its unique <\/span>tech stack<\/span><\/a> isn\u2019t entirely focused on Bitcoin. According to its founder, Alpha \u201cruns a rollup that rolls up to another rollup that rolls up to Bitcoin.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does that even mean? In short, it\u2019s a way of using multiple blockchain networks to create an experience that can be responsive and scalable. In this case, the project leverages a hybrid blockchain architecture with several components: Bitcoin, Ethereum scaling network <\/span>Polygon<\/span><\/a>, and the project\u2019s own Bitcoin scaling network called Trustless Computer.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to<\/span><\/a> New Bitcoin City\u2019s website, a Trustless Computer is a low-cost and speedy layer-2 blockchain built on top of Bitcoin that can support things like a decentralized exchange (DEX), tokenized communities called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and NFT marketplaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a no-code tool that allows for developers to choose whether they want to implement Optimistic rollups<\/a> or zero-knowledge rollups (zkRollups) to facilitate apps built on top of Bitcoin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alpha\u2019s hybrid design uses <\/span>Optimistic rollups as<\/span><\/a> a scaling solution by moving computation and data storage off-chain from Bitcoin. It currently taps into Polygon, the Ethereum scaling network, using it for data storage\u2014although Punk3700 says data availability can eventually live 100% on Bitcoin \u201cif need be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is one of the differences Alpha has with <\/span>Friend.tech<\/span><\/a>. Built on <\/span>Base<\/span><\/a>, Friend.tech leverages rollups directly on Ethereum, inheriting the network\u2019s security. Alpha has to look elsewhere for solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRollups on Bitcoin right now aren’t true rollups because Bitcoin can’t verify proofs,\u201d explained Bob Bodily, CEO of Bioniq, an Ordinals marketplace that runs on a Bitcoin sidechain. Lack of verification on Bitcoin\u2019s part means a certain degree of centralization will exist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That said, he told Decrypt<\/i> that \u201cpeople don\u2019t usually wait around for full decentralization,\u201d <\/span>pointing to the billions locked in layer-2 networks on Ethereum. \u201cPeople are keen to experiment with new tech.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even so, Bodily isn\u2019t sold on the answers Alpha\u2019s team provided in response to some of the concerns expressed over the project. He said he still doesn’t know who owns the smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) rollups, whether they\u2019re upgradeable or immutable, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tokenomics also raise some enormous <\/span>red flags<\/span><\/a>, which the team has yet to address. According to the Trustless Computer <\/span>website<\/span><\/a>, \u00a0the token supply is approximately $100 million TC, with 99.8% of it sitting in one address.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been digging in the explorer, but it’s very hard to figure it all out,\u201d Bodily said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even amid such concerns, Alpha\u2019s launch has sent a ripple of excitement throughout the Bitcoin space, much as the NFT-like Ordinals protocol and its BRC-20 token standard did earlier this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jake Gallen<\/span><\/a>, strategy lead at Emblem Vault, <\/span>has been at the forefront of the launch. Emblem Vault is a tool that lets users store tokens across blockchains without need<\/a> for a bridge. <\/span>\u201cThere is a more authentic feel to it,\u201d Gallen told Decrypt, <\/i>citing a friendlier user experience, along with the fact that \u201cthere is no point in airdrop farming.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you’re building a brand, the goal is to distribute awareness across platforms,” he concluded. \u201cJust as most people have multiple social media accounts across multiple apps, crypto users will use SocialFi on whichever blockchain they prefer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a 48-hour coding sprint, a Friend.tech look-alike dubbed Alpha launched on top of Bitcoin this weekend, bringing a social token experience to users of the venerated blockchain. Like Friend.tech\u2014which is built on Ethereum scaling network Base and saw a flurry of activity last month (and a recent revival)\u2014Alpha is a decentralized social network protocol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-159344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159351,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159344\/revisions\/159351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}