News
Next amico.tech? Avalanche Arena sets token launch plans
The Arena, a blockchain-based social token platform, said Wednesday that a cryptocurrency tied to its project will be operational in less than two weeks.
“It’s time to freeze,” the project announced in a Twitter post, adding that its ARENA token is expected to launch “in the week of June 10th.”
Built on Avalanche, Arena allows users to trade “tickets” tied to individual Twitter accounts. Priced at Avalanche’s native AVAX token, tickets grant holders benefits such as access to private chat rooms or viewing certain posts.
The project is comparable to friends.tech as an attempt to merge social media and decentralized finance in a seamless yet sticky way. Under the SocialFi umbrella, both projects place value on users’ ability to exert influence or capture attention online.
Much like the points-based rewards system popularized by NFT marketplace Blur, Arena users’ statistics are monitored to determine their eligibility for the eventual airdrop. This process considers aspects such as referrals, trading and general activity.
By rewarding early adopters and contributors to a crypto project with a share of newly launched tokens, airdrops can also serve as a way to drum up interest in emerging protocols. At the time of this writing, the scope or size of Arena’s airdrop was unclear.
One differentiator between Arena and friends.tech is the introduction of a public feed, which allows Arena users to post and view social posts without owning anything. On the public feed, users can also tip each other for posts in various cryptocurrencies: Avalanche-based assets, of course, but also some Solana meme coins.
At the time of writing, Arena’s total value locked (TVL) was over 32,000 AVAX, worth approximately $1.1 million. That’s a tenth of the assets locked on friends.tech, which has a TVL of $11 million, second DefiLllama.
Launched on the Layer-2 Base network last summer, the number of daily transactions on friends.tech has exploded as it has grown in popularity, reaching the 500,000 mark in September. However, as attention on friends.tech has cooled, daily transactions on the protocol have topped 60,000 only twice this year, according to data on Duna.
During the so-called V2 launch of friends.tech, with the addition of several new features, the project faced backlash for the launch of its native FRIEND token. Panicked and confused, some users reported problems claiming the token as its value dropped not long after FRIEND launched.
Since FRIEND’s debut earlier this month, the cryptocurrency has not recovered from its initial price of $3.03, according to CoinGecko. Instead, the coin has fallen 37% over the past two weeks, settling around $1.08 on Thursday.
While Arena arguably aims for a relatively smoother user experience, the protocol has encountered technical hurdles of its own, technically under a different name.
Formerly known as Stars Arena, the project renamed itself in late 2023, not long after the protocol was hacked involving $2.9 million worth of Avalanche tokens. According to blockchain security firm Halborn, the problem involved an unidentified reentry vulnerability. (Second DefilLamafunds worth $2.34 million were ultimately returned.)
Arena did not immediately respond to a request for comment Decipher.
By Ryan Ozawa.