I covered Boyco a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd share a quick update here.

This week, it was taken into its 'final form' with a bunch of new pools and functionality added. One of the new features is an estimated APY for each pool — something I had said would be nice when I tested it. That APY is based on an estimated Berachain value, which you can adjust to your expectations.

Deposits on all pools close tonight, so make sure you move fast if you choose to check it out!

I'm a bit pressed for time today, so that's all from me this week. Let's get straight into playing with Tribe, the latest SocialFi app everyone's talking about.

I've got two pieces by NLW to recommend today.

I'm always impressed by the sheer quantity and quality of his work, and as usual he provided some excellent summaries and explanations of the most recent important events in crypto, macro, and AI.

First, here's an episode breaking down Trump's crypto executive order and what it actually means.

And here's one of the best, most concise explanations of the DeepSeek situations I found this week.

Tribe.Run is essentially a new attempt at a FriendTech-like platform, this time running on Solana.

The chain isn't the only different thing, however. Tribe has tried to learn from and correct the mistakes of its predecessor. Most notably, it has offered a solution to FriendTech's creator incentive problem.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should probably explain what the platform is -- in case you're not aware of FriendTech or have forgotten what it was like.

Tribe is a social platform where creators and influencers can create private, token-gated chatrooms called 'Tribes' for their fans to join.

The creator who owns the Tribe is suitably known as the Chief. They issue a token that represents themself and grants access to their Tribe.

Tribes can only contain a certain number of users, which is determined by the Chief. The default is 12 members, but the Chief can increase this to 24 or 99 members if they prefer.

To enter a Tribe and interact with the Chief, a user must accumulate enough of the Chief's tokens to rank among the top 12 holders -- or among the top 24 or 99 holders if that is the Tribe's size.

Additionally, after the first week, the user must pay a certain number of tokens per month as a subscription fee. The default is 4.5 tokens per month, but the Chief could change this to 1.5 or 0 if they prefer. Anyone who opts out of this is removed from the Tribe, with the next largest token holder replacing them as an active member.

That is the big departure from FriendTech, which had no subscription fees and therefore struggled to offer ongoing rewards to incentivise creators and keep them on the platform.

Creators also earn a portion of trading fees -- just like FriendTech. In this case, every trade is subject to a 4% fee, half of which is distributed to the creator whose token is being traded.

Tribe has launched with more features and functionality than FriendTech ever had. In addition to chatting with their Tribe, Chiefs can also livestream to them. Users can pay a 0.5 token fee to ask a Chief a question without subscribing to their Tribe. Built-in airdrop functionality makes it easy for creators to gift their tokens to any other Tribe, or they can advertise themselves and their community on the Billboard.

Oh, and it's all built in the style of Windows 95.

On paper, it looks like a solid start for the latest iteration of one of crypto's most promising ideas. Let's check it out and see what Tribe.Run is like to use.

Btw, if you sign up using this referral link, you'll get a discount on trading fees: https://www.tribe.run/join/9a7a60.

Like FriendTech before it, Tribe is built with Privy, who make it easy to integrate wallets for a smooth user experience. That means the onboarding process is fairly simple and feels more like web2 than web3.

Signing up involves entering an email address and connecting a social media account -- with both Twitter and Farcaster supported.

I found it a little slow going through some of the steps, but the team have been open about performance issues affecting the app since it started to blow up last week and I assume they're working hard to improve it. (Given it's a few days since I tried it out, it may even be fixed already).

After completing the initial signup, it prompts you to create your own Tribe and the token associated with it.

As the message shows, this costs around 0.025 SOL, plus extra if you want to buy some of the tokens for yourself.

I do wonder if they could have made it a bit clearer how the number of tokens you're buying will affect the price. As it is, you need to enter the number of tokens you want and then see if the updated cost is worth it. This won't be relevant for many users, though. Most people probably don't need to buy any of their own tokens because they're not a creator whose tokens might go up in price.

I decided to buy 20 of my own tokens, taking the total setup cost to 0.03 SOL.

It feels like the natural next step would be clicking next and making the purchase, but of course, I don't have any SOL in my account yet so I'm just getting a warning that I have an insufficient balance.

Again I'm wondering if this could be made a bit clearer for users. Ultimately everyone will need to deposit SOL, so it might make sense to simply click the big Next button and then progress to the deposit step for all users.

Instead, you must click on the Deposit link underneath the textbox and that takes you to the deposit step.

What's good here is the range of options offered for funding the wallet.

I can't really remember the FriendTech onboarding process, but I feel like it only allowed ETH transfers from wallets.

Here, you can deposit SOL from your own wallet; pay with a debit or credit card via Moonpay; or bridge from another chain using Coinbase Onramp.

With my wallet funded, I can continue with creating my Tribe / tokens.

It shows the classic Windows loading bar as the transaction is processed, then displays a message to say the Tribe has been created.

Now the account is set up, I can take a look around.

I'll start on the account page, which shows my SOL balance and fees earned, links to Twitter and Farcaster, and a list of tokens owned and Tribes that I'm part of (currently just my own).

Additionally, there are buttons for adding SOL to my wallet, checking up on any referrals, and claiming any airdrops I may have received.

I take a look in my own Tribe to see what that's like.

The interface is pretty simple and very much like FriendTech. Just enter a message or upload an image, as you would in any chat app. There's also an option to launch a livestream if you want to do that.

The members button lets you whitelist addresses to be part of the Tribe or block users who are causing trouble.

Meanwhile, the manage button gives you options to change the size of the chat (either 12, 24, or 99 members are currently accepted) or edit subscription fees (with options of 4.5, 1.5, or 0 tokens per month).

I assume they will add more options here in the future -- that would certainly make sense to me. Maybe some influencers want to use this in a more OnlyFans- or Patreon-like capacity with thousands of members and lower prices. And some might want fewer members and even higher prices.

More flexibility would make sense to let everyone create the experience they want.

Of course, that's not essential for day one. This is a great starting point, and it's better than FriendTech ever was.

I notice there's also a little chat box in the bottom right of the window (outside the Windows 95-style window) where you can ask questions if you get stuck anywhere.

Let's look at the home page now.

It defaults to the Leaderboard, which shows the most valuable tokens on the platform.

The leader is currently Billzh, who created the app. I've seen prices have come down over the weekend, but when I looked earlier in the week he was priced at more than 1 SOL per token. Even with the lower prices, it would be pretty expensive to join his chat.

Frankly, scrolling through the list, all of the big names are already quite expensive.

I can't help but think this was part of FriendTech's problem, as potential users may be put off if they can't afford to enter any interesting communities. At the same time, keeping groups small is one of the things that makes the platform attractive. In many ways, the point is to provide priority access to the Chiefs. If they are popular and influential people, their time is valuable, and so it should be expensive to access them.

Anyway, if you can't afford enough tokens to access a celebrity's chat, you can always buy a small number of tokens just to have price exposure.

If you can't find a user that interests you (or is affordable) in the Leaderboard, you can also search the platform for users with the search tool.

I notice that some users are on the platform but don't have tokens to buy and Tribes to join. Presumably, they only did half the signup to create the account but didn't make any transactions to set up the Tribe.

There are also some accounts that seem fake. I came across a fake Cobie, for instance, so you may need to be careful before buying tokens. What's good is that the fake account I saw had a warning message to make users wary of the dangers here. I'm guessing they won't have flagged every potentially fake account, but it's nice they are trying where they can.

The billboard lets you create posts for all users to see, not just your Tribe. This could help you advertise yourself and attract new members to your chat.

I wonder if this, or something like it, would make more sense as the default home page of the app. Arguably, it could provide a Twitter-like experience with constant posting to draw people in and keep them engaged, even if they aren't actively part of Tribes.

In its current form, it's not that interesting though -- just a lot of people posting what largely seems to be spam.

At the moment, posting here is free but limited to one post every 360 minutes. I could see this changing at some point in the future, perhaps requiring TRIBE tokens or something like that.

Let's take a look at another user's account now.

The page has a simple chart showing the token's price history -- though it's not super what the timeframe is. Basically, it's enough to get a rough idea of past prices and recent trends, but I don't think anyone's going to be doing technical analysis on this. I suppose this is partly a limitation of the quirky UX they've gone with. But it might be nice to enable slightly clearer charts for those who would find the information useful.

Here, we can also see the AMA list, where non-Tribe members have asked questions to the Chief. You can write your own question by clicking on the pencil in the bottom corner, but this costs 0.5 tokens.

I like this. It's a definite improvement on FriendTech and means users who aren't as wealthy still have some chance of interacting with influencers even if they can't afford full access to the Tribe.

I could see this evolving in a few ways. First, you currently need to be a Tribe member to view the response (if you didn't ask the question). Why not allow other users to pay a small fee to view the answers on a one-off basis? Second, I could imagine influencers having more control over how much this costs. Maybe some would want to increase the price to 1 token or more to make answering worth their time.

The floating coin is the platform's airdrop feature, letting you send your tokens to anyone in the Tribe you're currently viewing.

I like that it shows when the user was last active and when they posted. If someone hasn't been on in weeks, then maybe you don't want to buy their token as they won't be active enough to provide real value.

One thing this immediate view doesn't make clear is how many members are currently in the Tribe or how much it would cost to join. I assume that information is tucked away somewhere, but I would argue the joining price is essential information that should be clearly presented on the profile.

OK, you can find this information under More.

Here, it lists all of the token holders, how many tokens they have, and if they are active in the Tribe. People who are active Tribe members have a little trophy next to their names.

Let's try buying someone's token now.

Just like when I bought my own tokens on signup, you have to enter the quantity of tokens you want to buy.

The smallest amount you can purchase seems to be 0.1 tokens at the moment (at least it is on this account, maybe it changes depending on who you're buying and how much they cost?) I don't see why this can't be any fraction of a token. Forcing users to buy too much may price some users out of even speculating if accounts become very expensive. Perhaps this is something that will change in time.

I notice there is a button that says "buy minimum to enter chat", so at least they make it easy here. I still think this number should be on the user's profile, though.

Once you have entered the number of tokens to buy, you click next and confirm the transaction. It takes a few seconds for everything to happen, but again the speed isn't bad considering some of the comments I had seen before I tried Tribe for myself and the level of demand the platform has been experiencing lately.

Joining a chat is as simple as buying sufficient tokens.

The first 7 days after this are free, with no subscription fees. Then you'll need to pay however many tokens the Chief has set per month.

This all seems to happen automatically after you buy enough tokens. You'll need to actively opt out of the chat by quitting if you don't want to pay.

Once you're in the chat, you can scroll back to see every member's question and the Chief's answers in the group's history.

It's possible to like and comment on other people's posts.

I've spent a while trying to find users whose chats I might actually want to be a part of, and honestly, I'm struggling. I find people are either too expensive to justify or not yet on the platform.

Whilst I love the concept of FriendTech/Tribe and think it could be massively successful, I also find there's not much here to keep me coming back as an average user.

That's partly why I think changing the Billboard view to a Twitter-like timeline could be good. At least I'd then have a reason to keep coming back, and I might stumble upon accounts I truly believe are worth paying to access or investing in.

Personally, I don't particularly want to risk hundreds of dollars buying access to an influencer right now. You can argue that you don't 'lose' the money as you can sell the tokens to get it back (minus subscription fees), but the price can easily change to make the experience rather expensive.

I can see Tribe being incredibly useful for certain people. If you're building a product and want to get thoughts from an investor, builder, or influencer who might promote it, then the tool is amazing and a Tribe could easily provide thousands of dollars of value.

And I definitely think Tribe is worth checking out so you can see if there's a valuable experience here for you. (Use this link: https://www.tribe.run/join/9a7a60)

I'm excited to see how it develops. FriendTech was such a waste of potential, so it's good to see a new (and hopefully more competent) team picking the idea up again and carrying it forward. Despite my reservations, I can see Tribe -- or something very similar -- becoming one of crypto's first breakout apps.