The team behind the decentralized social media platform Friend.tech has refused a recent report that claimed the personal information of over 100,000 users had been "leaked." The report, initially published by The Block, stated that the data made public by Banteg, a pseudonymous developer of Yearn Finance, constituted a "leak."
However, the Friend.tech team clarified that the information in question had been obtained by scraping its public API, likening it to someone being accused of hacking based on their public Twitter activity. The official Friend.tech account emphasized this point, with the post receiving support from contributors in the X (formerly known as Twitter) community.
The community note further clarified that the underlying data was publicly accessible and could be obtained by examining a block explorer. The note explained how the platform's mechanics work, with a portion of funds from share purchases going to the creator's wallet, a process visible in the blockchain. Banteg initially shared scraped data on GitHub, including wallet addresses on Base linked to the corresponding Twitter usernames of more than 101,000 users.
According to Banteg, the leaked data indicated that over 101,000 users had given permission for Friend.tech to post. Banteg also criticized the misinterpretation of their original post. Meanwhile, members of the X community reacted humorously, sharing links to Ethereum block explorers and jokingly claiming to have found "leaked databases" of transactions.
The incident occurred after a report from blockchain analytics service Spot On Chain revealed certain information through Friend.tech's API that was not readily available to regular users of the app. This data could potentially be exploited by bots to quickly buy shares after prominent accounts registered with Friend.tech. Despite this controversy, since its beta launch on August 11th, Friend.tech has seen substantial user engagement, with over 934,000 unique transactions amounting to 34,320 ETH (equivalent to $57,101,116 at current prices) .
