The Daily: Friend.Tech team renounces control, Bernstein's Trump vs. Harris bitcoin price prediction, DRiP raises $8 million and more

I hope you had a good weekend, folks. In today's Daily, the Friend.Tech team renounces control over its smart contracts, Bernstein analysts predict a wide divergence in outcomes for bitcoin depending on who wins the U.S. presidential election, DRiP raises $8 million and more.

Meanwhile, Pantera, ParaFi and others buy FTX's Metaplex tokens, according to the latest edition of The Funding newsletter.

Let's get started.

Friend.Tech team renounces control of smart contracts

The team behind the web3 social network Friend.Tech has renounced control of its smart contracts , effectively freezing platform development barely a year after its initial launch success.

• Friend.Tech's developers called a function on the platform's smart contracts on Sept. 8 that transferred their control to Ethereum's null address, locking the current system in place and preventing further changes.
• "No fees from either smart contracts or [the website] currently go to the Friend.Tech dev team multisig," the team clarified in an announcement on X.
• While the platform will continue to function in its current form, the revocation makes the implementation of new features impossible, outside of forking the protocol to create something new.
• Launched on the Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 network Base last August, Friend.Tech saw rapid early growth, exceeding the daily earnings of Ethereum at one point.
• The project also raised a seed round from crypto VC firm Paradigm, though the amount was undisclosed at the time.
• However, after the initial hype died down and following an underwhelming launch of the protocol's v2 and token airdrop, user interest and activity fell into sharp decline.

Bernstein predicts diverging bitcoin prices depending on US election outcome

Bitcoin is a "Trump trade," according to analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein — and the outcome of November's U.S. presidential election could "determine the destiny of the industry."

• The Bernstein analysts predict bitcoin could reach $80,000 to $90,000 by the end of the year if Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November.
• Conversely, if Kamala Harris wins, they predict bitcoin to break the current $50,000 floor and head back to test the $30,000 to $40,000 range where the spot Bitcoin ETFs-driven momentum began.
• The analysts believe that vocally pro-crypto Trump offers a more favorable regulatory environment for the industry, compared to the relative silence on crypto policy from Harris.
• Current odds on the decentralized predictions platform Polymarket show Trump leading Harris by 52% to 47% in the U.S. presidential race.

DRiP raises $8 million from former TikTok execs, NFX and Coinbase Ventures

Solana-based creator engagement platform DRiP has raised $8 million in a seed round led by NFX, Coinbase Ventures and Progression — a fund started by former TikTok executives.

• The fresh funds will be used to bring DRiP's mobile app to market and expand the development of platform features.
• DRiP allows creators to distribute digital collectibles on Solana, including exclusive images, video, audio and other multimedia content, using a combination of micropayment tips and premium content auction sales.
• The platform aims to challenge web2 giants like YouTube and Instagram by offering creators a more direct connection to fans and a higher share of earnings.
• DRiP claims to have distributed 170 million collectibles to over 2 million unique wallets from 550 creators over the past two years.

Unisat-backed Fractal Bitcoin goes live on mainnet, taps into core code for scaling solution

Fractal Bitcoin, led by Unisat and Block Space Force, launched its mainnet on Monday, introducing a Bitcoin scaling solution that leverages the Bitcoin Core codebase.

• It aims to differentiate itself from other Bitcoin sidechains and purported Layer 2 solutions by focusing on Bitcoin-native constructs rather than Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility.
• The network claims to achieve block confirmation times of under 30 seconds and support a 20 times increase in capacity per layer through what's known as recursive layerinng.
• Fractal can natively support Bitcoin protocols such as BRC-20, Runes and Ordinals, and incorporates a new mining structure called "Cadence Mining," which combines permissionless mining with Bitcoin merged mining to improve network security.
• The project also introduced a native token, FB, with a supply of 210 million, split equally between proof-of-work mining rewards and a pre-mined allocation for core contributors, investors, an ecosystem treasury and community grants.

Toncoin price recovers following Durov's release

Toncoin's price rose by over 7% in the past 24 hours, outpacing major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether.

• However, despite a gradual recovery following the release on bail of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov by French authorities, Toncoin, closely linked with the messaging app, has dropped out of the crypto market cap top ten, replaced by Tron.
• Analysts at Bitget see potential for further Toncoin outperformance in September, particularly if a U.S. Federal Reserve rate cut fosters a risk-on market environment.

In the next 24 hours

• U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michael Barr will speak at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday.
• ETHSafari continues in Kenya.

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