When friends with benefits exploded in cryptographic consciousness in 2020, it was the type of Fomo inductor project that immediately made people speak. With a wink, a sexy name and members, including musicians Erykah Badu and Azealia Banks, it was a club that many wanted to be part.
When emerging at a time when everyone was locked up and yearning for the connection, he filled a void and showed that cryptography could unite the real people. Around 6,000 bought in the Token (becoming members) and the chapters sprouted worldwide, focusing on hipster technology such as the New York.
The New York Times, as it tends to see with cryptography, gently mocked the idea. A 2022 profile was opened with an anecdote about the members who develop a “Yerba Maté with flavor and brilliant with a coffee company.” It makes its soda $ 6 instead of $ 2, “said a member. The inference was clear: they were cryptographic children with ideas, available income, a long time in their hands and not much to show.
Even so, the New York Times hit what was definitely new about FWB. He called the group, which was mainly formed in Discord, a “decentralized Soh house” and “a VIP room for Crypto’s creative class.” I was tokenizing a community (with a DAO) in a way that showed that it could create something valuable as much as online. The NYT said the group had raised $ 10 million from investors and that, after a financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, it was valued at $ 100 million.
It was not clear what FWB did exactly. Of course, it was good to organize interesting events worldwide. It was good to build a community, generate FOMO through the media and increase its Token price. But after that? TBD
“The original model was just a group chat with a file. The benefits at that time were only Alfa,” said CEO Greg Bresnitz in an interview.
Fast advance until 2025, after FTX and the accident, FWB looks like a more serious outfit. Today, it focuses on the construction of products that people really want to use and are hoping to expand web3 beyond specialized financial products. Less Yerba Maté, more innovation in lodging in music, cinema and culture.
“This is a good turning point for the industry. We have the opportunity to encourage a new wave of builders to space. Make this vision and the cake is larger is incredibly important,” Bresnitz said. “We have done it very well in the physical world. Now we are focused on the revitalization of the world online and recovering that value.”
This week, FWB announced friends with Builders, a cohorts -based construction program that was associated with AWS, Alchemy, Thirdweb, Quicknode, Akave, Filecoin, Base, World and several others. The idea is to invite creative technologists to work collectively in quarterly in the quarter in initial stage projects, using tools provided by the partners. The first cohort (application deadline: April 28) will focus on developing products around AI agents.
Bresnitz emphasizes that builders’ friends is definitely not a hackathon.
“The general model of Hackathon does not work. You have eight hours at a conference, 48 hours to build it and then get the award money. That only speaks of a certain type of builder that can work intensely for 48 hours,” said Bresnitz.
With friends of the builders, the reward is the developed product, not the prize and the gong given by the organizers of Hackathon. It also focuses on products where web technology 3 is under the hood, instead of the thing itself.
“Someone could enter and build the 700th platform defi and we are not going to stop them. They may. That’s great. But, for me, what I think the industry needs is to group all this in something that feels totally normal,” Bresnitz said.
It points out projects such as Blackbird, the restaurant’s loyalty application, as an example of the type of friends that builders wants to incubate. Blackbird is useful and has a conventional attraction, and the cryptographic element (it has a cryptocurrency called fly) dismissed. The point is utility, it is not that it is cryptography.
“We need a new type of person in this space,” Bresnitz said. “The FWB person has always been a creative technologist. These are people who understand what people want and are looking for technology to support that. That is different from what we often see [in crypto]That it is’ we build a hammer that is also a screwdriver, who wants it? “
Bresnitz argues that Crypto has created a large infrastructure of tools for builders. Now you need to develop products that dismiss technology. The builders in their program will have access to the founders of the partner groups through Discord and Meetups. They will receive developer credits and may take advantage of the wide Devrel (developer support).
The friends of the builders will be executed in quarters 1, 2 and 4. The fourth 3 will be left for the annual FWB Fest meeting in California, where the builders will show their work. Last year, base, a key partner of FWB, held its annual meeting, the base camp, in the same place (near Idyllwild) shortly before Fest began.
As a pilot of the new program, FWB recently organized a cohort with World (previously Worldcoin). FWB/World received 140 applications and participating builders created 40 new mini-Apps. The builders flew to Buenos Aires to participate in growth, and now some will participate in a demonstration day in New York on May 21. Two of these projects already have investor term sheets.
Bresnitz is a strong defender of his initiative. But it also shows humility towards cryptography that is not always evident in conversations with other founders. He believes that web3 has not yet shown what he can really do for the world.
“We have not deciphered the code yet. This is about saying ‘Can we try something different?'”
