A systematic, quantitative investment firm. Disclaimer: Tweet =\= investment advice. We may have positions in tokens, instruments, protocols discussed.
"We're just gambling on vaporware" is a common theme echoing through CT.
It seems like crypto only found PMF in pure speculation on shiny tickers.
Where do we go from here? In our more recent thesis, we dive deeper into where we see the game evolving:
FriendTech is part of a wider thesis that we have been discussing at Manifold. We will be publishing a longer write-up in the future.
Previously, Web3 applications were focused on onboarding existing crypto-native / DeFi users who were already familiar with the crypto stack.
- on how cat manage to garantee first and second buy of cat's shares.
friend tech (ft) makes it very hard for new big accounts to onboard without getting sniped by spam bots, which is terrible and a deterrent for the app to succeed in cat opinion
on ft, spam bots identify
Apparently there were rumors and misinformation today on "FriendTech imploding" and that CL and Manifold were involved.
This is clearly false and completely impossible.
On the trading side, our accounts' FT portfolios combine for <1% of FT TVL as well as our AUM - not sure how
Most funds have at least 1-2 partners super active on friendtech already.
They are all talking about friendtech during their IC this week, like it or not. They need to deploy, but how many things are there in crypto that's exciting & investable? Each week, they realize this
first of many funds to come that will start taking friendtech seriously
you can already find many fund-adjacent individuals testing on their personal accounts, only a matter of time before they convince partners to deploy
Getting a lot of inbounds from accounts that want to launch snipe-prevented.
To make it easier, sign up on this Google Form - open to everyone:
We'll run this completely for free - we just want to do our part in keeping value within the ecosystem.
If any hacker gains access to a FriendTech account via simswap/email hack, they can rug the whole account
If you assume 1/3 of FriendTech accounts are connected to phone numbers, that's $20M at risk from sim-swaps
FriendTech's current setup also technically allows a rogue dev
So what is the fairest way to launch a big FriendTech account?
With the current setup of FriendTech, fair launches have not been possible. Sniping & non-transferability of keys makes it difficult to onboard big users.
Snipe-prevention/self-snipe was only the first step.
We
High chance SA "hack" was an intentional rug masked as an exploit
SA had an upgradeable contract fully controlled by anons pointing to an unverified contract - classic setup for insider exploit
Disconnect Twitter + withdraw from SA wallet, their wallet safety also unknown
I've looked at the exploit tx and UNVERIFIED
@starsarenacom
contract and as far as I understand this happend (might be totally wrong tho I'm a noobie):
They added a bunch of unnecessary function to the code that regular user will not ever touch and because the contract is not
Welcome
@Bassjackers
to FriendTech!
First big DJ/Music artist to launch snipe-prevented.
This time we helped the account sell into the sniper bots - allowing fans to buy lower.
If you are running a sniper bot, we recommend not trying because that's how you blow up 7E again :)
Best signal for true adoption?
Users start spending days building infrastructure & tooling on top of an app - fully organically
We saw this with DeFiPulse/Llama for DeFi, RarityTools for NFTs, all the FriendTech tools, etc
This is PMF - Fantasy is the start of a new ecosystem
I finished my first version of my data tool for
@fantasy_top_
.
The priority was to get online as quickly as possible with some basic information. It basically took me 24 hours to get to this stage, so i would say not bad. It may be buggy and I still need
In 2024, Hyperliquid is growing rapidly but there is no way to invest directly.
Everyone knows HL will hit, but points are now uber-competitive.
In order to gain exposure to HL beta, we decided to build positions in multiple HL spot alts over time.
Though the correlation may
How I missed investing in Uber and how it directly led me to one of my most incredible trades. This is actually one of the most memorable stories because its a lesson of turning a private market insight into a fully actionable public market short.
In 2014 Uber was raising and
We'll be looking closely at teams participating in the Big Bang.
Excited to meet developers building on
@Blast_L2
and looking forward to back some of them!
The Blast Testnet is OFFICIALLY LIVE
With it, the Blast BIG BANG competition officially begins.
Dapps can compete to get in front of 100k users & $1.3B in TVL, connect with top investors, and earn the Blast Airdrop.
Yes, we did buy CANTO at the fair & willing market price of generous Canto LPs
Could write a thesis on CANTO about RWAs, ZkL2, etc.
But no, it really came down to:
- The best memes
- CANTO = people's chain - CT natives built it together
- Can't fade a team that never gives up
If you trade on any perp DEX, high chance that you are trading against liquidity bootstrapped through Elixir.
We are excited to support Elixir's journey as they integrate and hypercharge all of the largest DEXs in the ecosystem.
Liquidity is king.
Elixir has closed our Series B at an $800M valuation, with participation from Mysten Labs, Maelstrom, Manifold, Arthur Hayes, Amber Group, others
With this, the Elixir Apothecary is now live - users can claim welcome potions today ahead of mainnet ⚗️👇
Will Web3 consumer apps drive the next wave of user adoption in crypto?
As promised, we've published our thesis on consumer apps & the infra layer powering the movement.
Reach out if you are building in the space!
Read the article here:
FriendTech is part of a wider thesis that we have been discussing at Manifold. We will be publishing a longer write-up in the future.
Previously, Web3 applications were focused on onboarding existing crypto-native / DeFi users who were already familiar with the crypto stack.
Wow
Community taking over, building all the FriendTech features on top of Fantasy
Fantasy devs don't need to write a single line of code
Win market share while sipping on French coffee
Glad we were able to solve this and prevent buyers from getting dumped on by sniper bots!
We are happy to help other accounts that need help circumventing spammers.
- on how cat manage to garantee first and second buy of cat's shares.
friend tech (ft) makes it very hard for new big accounts to onboard without getting sniped by spam bots, which is terrible and a deterrent for the app to succeed in cat opinion
on ft, spam bots identify
The million-dollar question:
Where should we deploy our assets to maximize rewards on Blast?
How you spend your time and resources can change whether you multiply your balances to simply collecting a paltry yield.
The clear priorities are:
1. Maximize upside vs capital invested
Ethena team can't stop cookin
USDe is becoming the go-to yield-bearing collateral of our space
Only a matter of time until everyone is earning 35%+ on their collateral while using it to trade perps, spot margin, etc on all major platforms
Love seeing two amazing teams building together to solve critical problems in our space.
Better Web3 UX will bring the next delta of users and capital into crypto, and could be one of the catalysts to widespread adoption.
Wanted to mention one thing we're noticing already
This whole social web of owning each other's keys is super interesting
Verifiable/public ownership of each other's keys, incentivizes people to hold and come back to each other
Retention up? Web3 social has a chance?
Interesting thought
Keys are not transferrable, but we could build a smart contract that buys on account creation
Owner can "transfer" to other users, and the contract maps the shares from owner to new address
When user wants to sell, contract sells then gives user ETH
Congratulations to the winners of the Blast Big Bang!
We are excited to use some of these promising protocols as soon as mainnet launches.
Feel free to DM us for investment, potential collaborations, integrations, liquidity partnerships, and more.
Manifold is looking for an analyst for our venture fund!
DM us here or send your resume to careers
@manifoldtrading
.com
Experience in crypto / finance will be preferred.
We care most about strong work ethic, attention to detail, and organization.
Really cool to see new products, infra, tooling being built out on top of FriendTech every day.
Consumer app drives adoption --> consumers tell builders what infra they need --> new products attract more users and increase retention. Less $ being thrown at picks & shovels plays
Who actually moves markets in DeFi?
In our research, we dive deeper into the ever-so-powerful customer segment native to crypto: "Protail"
These users have been outperforming both retail and institutions while pushing nontrivial volumes
Read more here:
Excited for more projects creating official FriendTech accounts!
We will help Impossible Finance with a whitelisted launch. WL users will get in right after the self-snipe but before other sniper bots.
This will be the first WL-launch and a great way to test the pipes.
Moonbags built a UI on to facilitate presales!
Large accounts launching with the presale mechanism (using the proxy contract) will show up on the UI.
Whitelisted addresses will be able to participate in these launches.
If you'd like to join
@friendtech
and have a large account (or are worried about getting botted),
@ManifoldTrading
+ can help!
We will be announcing more details soon, but if you're interested, fill out this quick form:
And no,
It is correct that self-sniping only prevents frontrunning/bots for the account creators.
We realized and communicated that this doesn't help users buying in after, because sniper bots will bid up the next ~X shares anyway.
Regardless of the winner(s) of the following snipes,
So what is the fairest way to launch a big FriendTech account?
With the current setup of FriendTech, fair launches have not been possible. Sniping & non-transferability of keys makes it difficult to onboard big users.
Snipe-prevention/self-snipe was only the first step.
We
One of the main reasons we never bought SA keys / shilled was smart contract riskz
They made contract seem like a straight fork of FriendTech with same ABI and function names.
If so, why leave it unverified?
FriendTech at least had a clean base setup.
before getting on FT cat mev team dug into security of privy and FT smart contract, other than simswaps which is fixed now via changing login methods
the $ is pretty safe, dont know if app is successful or not in future, but imagine shilling something w unknown sc risks lmeow
Markets might be down bad but Manifold is not. We view this as an excellent opportunity to cut through the noise and build. The teams that establish top class infrastructure now will prevail through the next cycles.
Is it safe to farm the Blast airdrop?
There has been a lot of chatter lately on Blast security - some are entirely valid points but there is a lot of misinformation. Posting our thoughts below.
Disclaimer: We are investors in Blast, and have deposited funds into the Blast
@Bassjackers
If you want to look more into the transactions:
1. First key bought by Bassjackers
2. Bassjackers self-snipes next 59 cheapest keys
3. Bad sniper buys keys after
4. Bassjackers sells 40 keys, bots now down horrendous
5. Users can buy lower
They likely won't risk it again
We've just announced the
@ManifoldTrading
MEV Bounty Competition!
Register below to answer Manifold's challenge, rank among the best and win prizes 🏆
The competition launches on Monday, September 19th.
Find out more in the official announcement:
Announcing Canto's Cyclone Stack 🌪️⚡A Parallel Execution EVM.
Innovative Upgrades = Performance Like Never Before
⚒️ Three key upgrades support Cyclone Stack...
1️⃣ The Callisto Upgrade
Already in motion! Preparing to slash block times to sub-second intervals, leveraging the
Is
@friendtech
the Uniswap Moment for Social?
Imran and Qiao bring on Aric and Jae with
@ManifoldTrading
to discuss whether
@friendtech
is the Uniswap moment for social.
YouTube:
Spotify:
Apple:
It was not easy saying no to Super bowl ads, stadium naming rights, large sponsor deals a few months ago, but we did.
Today, we are hiring for 7+ open positions at Manifold👇
Apply Here:
We are looking to expand the Manifold family!
If you are interested in a Quant or Engineering role at Manifold, please email your resume to careers
@manifoldtrading
.com
Comp range: 200K-1M+/year
Detailed job descriptions below:
Excited to share our investment in MultiSynq!
This team has one of the most impressive backgrounds we have seen, and are capable of building their vision out.
If you don't have DePIN exposure, check out MultiSynq and simply sign up to start earning points.
Synchronizing the Internet Together:
@multisynq
🤝
@ManifoldTrading
We are excited to announce that Croquet Labs, the core team behind Multisynq, has raised $2.2M from Manifold and many others.
Boost is now LIVE!
Start earning BOOST by depositing ETH at
Super spins give up to 10x BOOST, only available for the first hour of each epoch.
Boost now. Blast later. 🚀
Thank you for the overwhelming interest!
Manifold is also looking for more software engineers - specifically those with experience in:
- Low-latency trading systems
- C++
Please send resumes to careers
@manifoldtrading
.com if you are interested
Manifold is looking for an analyst for our venture fund!
DM us here or send your resume to careers
@manifoldtrading
.com
Experience in crypto / finance will be preferred.
We care most about strong work ethic, attention to detail, and organization.
One of our favorite UIs, grateful to be helping each other!
Learning first hand how many developers / projects you can find by being very active in a community. Excited to see how
@0xMoonbags
builds out more features and tooling over time.
I'm excited to team up with
@ManifoldTrading
to give their key holders free access to the beta of Frendex, a
@friendtech
analytics, research, and trading terminal that I am developing.
If you hold one of their keys, you already have access 🔥
More info below 👇
Introducing Blast: The only Ethereum L2 with native yield for ETH and stablecoins.
We’ve raised $20m from
@Paradigm
and
@StandardCrypto
to build the L2 that helps you earn more.
Details on how to get early access at the end of the thread👇
Privy has established itself as the kingpin of Web3 consumer applications.
We are thrilled to be part of Privy's journey early - Privy's infrastructure layer will power the most prominent consumer apps in Web3.
Read more on our general thesis here:
This is why Cardano security is quite underrated / bullish
If (hypothetically) there were smart contracts to hack on chain, users get auto-30 minute timelock to react, while hackers are limited to 3 TPS
Imagine not reshaping the fabrics of our society
ethereum smart contracts get hacked for millions on a bi-monthly basis & defi hacks total in the billions but their claim to fame for being worth 10x more than every other blockchain is that they are "more secure" bc they have 4,000 nodes globally in some AWS instances
We usually only post about crypto and trading
But let's take a moment to appreciate the next generation's
#1
trader
He may surpass the best, maybe even the cat
Cheering on teams that are crushing is the easy part of the game.
But it is also an investor's duty to support their port cos even through their lows, as long as the founder wants to keep building.
We are happy to do our part & help improve
@_munchables_
's security moving fwd.
We’re on the final steps with the lockdrop refunds.
As part of our next phase, we have restructured the team completely.
We have brought in established and trusted entities to help upgrade the security of the project's funds and smart contracts.
First they came for Ripple, and I did not speak out - because I didn't hold any XRP.
Then they came for Coinbase, and I did not speak out - Brian could stand his ground.
Then they came for our ETH - and this time I must speak out - all I could do was bid more.
@Bassjackers
To people curious about this a transaction that bought after the sandwich:
He bought 3 blocks later and would have bought even minutes later.
This is basically a limit bid order in typical markets.
The bots that blindly aped after self-snipe lost money.
1. This sends a
Manifold is rooting for cat
Since early days of CT, this internet cat has been out-trading us all, this time will be no different
He shall prove he has many more socks to fill
(This is not betting advice)
@DrgStefanescu
Yup, if value of keys (minus self-buys) is 0, then risk premium to (3,3) is higher
Until key holder distribution increases, the newer account should be offering to buy more ETH notional for the exchange
Would be cool if
@0xBreadguy
's and other UIs suggested the fair prices
Already seeing high quality teams building new infrastructure on Monad
True parallel EVM unlocks new onchain primitives and meta games that will reward those who study them early
Study Miner Extractable Value. Study EtherDelta. Study Flash Boys 2.0.
"any knowledge that is thus independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses is entitled aPriori" – Kant
"the Monad is nothing other than a simple substance which enters into compounds" – Leibniz
enters aPriori on
@monad_xyz
, where knowledge meets substance.
🚨🚨
@ManifoldTrading
MEV Bounty Competition is done!
For four weeks hackers searched for profitable opportunities on a custom EVM fork and now the time has come to reward the winners. 💸
Winners in 🧵
@0xWildWizard
@friendtech
Well deserved Wiz - you're one of our favorite accounts
Respect the grind on tooling + building one of the realest FriendTech communities
To answer some questions
Rogue dev wouldn't be able to rug all wallets immediately just from DB
But they could add some snooper in the code where anybody going online would be open to attack
Not as bad as an offline vuln though
Who actually moves markets in DeFi?
In our research, we dive deeper into the ever-so-powerful customer segment native to crypto: "Protail"
These users have been outperforming both retail and institutions while pushing nontrivial volumes
Read more here:
Great to see developers forking / starring the repo!
There has been some discussion on excess ETH that people could accidentally send to the contract.
Would love to get more thoughts for the community here:
@tyh668
Could be trying to cover up, could have been rogue devs
Really hope that users get some money back, but we don't recommend depositing into SA
If it was a rogue dev, there easily could be other issues that we don't know about
@gmEthereum
I believe
@henri_stern
and team has already been implementing this
In the meantime FriendTech can implement quick options to make login-related hacks much more difficult