Friend.tech price drops over 20% after co-founder Racer hints at leaving Base

The native token for Web3 social networ Friend.tech FRIEND +3.94% fell sharply today after the protocol's co-founder, known pseudonymously as Racer, publicly expressed a desire to leave Base, the Coinbase-created Ethereum Layer-2 network that hosts the project. 

"System design bounty: If you can figure out a way to migrate friendtech off of Base without causing major issues for users, and it works well enough that we decide to use it, we will pay you $200K," Racer wrote on X. 

According to Racer, the Friend.tech team's relationship with Base has been rocky. "Farcaster investors went apeshit smearing us when we launched because they misunderstood what we were doing. Pushed it really hard on their team and users and the relationship has been downhill since then with us getting ostracized from anything that is for the 'Base community'," Racer wrote in another post. (At certain times on Sunday, Racer's posts were inaccessible; it's unclear whether or not they deleted their account following the posts.)

In response, Jesse Pollak, who heads Base for Coinbase, offered a diplomatic post of his own, acknowledging that Friend.tech's team had felt "isolated and disconnected" from certain parts of the Base and Ethereum ecosystems. "I'll be sad if the team decides to leave Base, but I also respect and will support whatever path - that's the beauty of the decentralized, onchain, economy," Pollak wrote.

Friend.tech's token, which was launched recently as part of the social network's version 2 rollout, fell sharply following the post, registering a decline around 20%, according to The Block's price page.