Avalanche Pumps as Friend.tech Fork Stars Arena Catches Fire

The price of Avalanche (AVAX) has surged following an increase in interest in a new social app built on its blockchain.

AVAX at the time of writing was trading for $10.70, a 8.3% 24-hour increase, according to CoinGecko data. This makes the asset one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies in the past day.

And in the past week, it's also a winner, having shot up nearly 17% in seven days.

The reason: Stars Arena, a social platform rival to Friend.tech built on Avalanche's Contract Chain (C-Chain).

Launched last month, Stars Arena is a Friend.tech fork (basically a copy) and has drawn users wanting an alternative to Friend.tech, which exploded with popularity following its August launch.

And people are interested in it: transactions have surged by nearly 40% to 218,000 in the past day, DappRadar data shows. And volume is up 248% in 24 hours, now touching $3.86 million in transactions.

Stars Arena, like Friend.tech, is a social token-driven platform. This means it allows users to create and monetize online communities.

The idea is that influencers and online creators can monetize a fan base in exchange for exclusive offers and content.

With Stars Arena, users can link their Twitter accounts to the platform and then trade profile tokens of other members.

To do so, they need an Avalanche address linked to their profiles to transfer funds from the platform—hence the surge in blockchain activity and AVAX price jump.

But the app has also experienced some problems. Earlier this week, it was exploited and hackers got away with $2,000. The app's official Twitter account said that the exploit had "been fixed" but warned users that it was "at war."

"We’re being targeted by malicious actors in the space that want to steal your money," it said. But pseudonymous developer and founder of wallet security project Delegate "foobar" isn't convinced. "You took a fully functional base contract and somehow added new attack vectors in your unverified fork," they tweeted in response.

Friend.tech, which exists on the Ethereum layer-2 network Base, was also hit with an exploit this week: a hacker drained the accounts of four users, making away with $385,000 in Ethereum.

The decentralized social app craze blew up in August when celebrities like NBA star Grayson Allen expressed interest in the Friend.tech platform. It then died down in the weeks following its launch but then experienced a renewed surge in popularity.