Hello Warpcasters!

Here is my personal experience since I joined alfafrens.com. I'll try to make this enjoyable and simple because your time is valuable.

Since the first news about the alfafrens project everyone in Warpcast was excited because they believed they can earn a lot, as its deposit was set on @DEGEN. I was new to FC and I used my earnings from the previous season to invest on alfafrens. First of all let's see how you start with alfafrens step by step:
1. Get an invite code from someone who is already in the alfafrens
2. Go to alfafrens.com, hit "sigh in" and scan a code (if you're on laptop) or open a link (if you're on your phone) and then enter the invite code
3. You'll get a wallet address for your $ALFA account and you have to deposit $DEGEN in it (don't put much, I deposited 500 the first time)
4. The moment you deposit, your $ALFA curation starts (I had only 1 $ALFA per day)
5. Build (or not) your channel. Subscribe to channels, even your own and get your daily $ALFA claim higher
6. After claiming, stake $ALFA in channels either your own or some friends'. You don't have to subscribe to a channel to stake $ALFA on them, Subscription fees are 500, 1000 and 1500 $DEGEN, I set mine at 500.
7. Then watch your deposited $DEGEN go down (called negative state which I didn't know about at first), if you earn more and more your $DEGEN will go up (called positive state, again I didn't know at all), everything is estimated so don't have high hopes of riches!
8. You can claim $ALFA at every hour of the day you want but in order to avoid multiple high gas fees do it once every 24h, if you don't claim the the gained alfa will disappear and I don't know where.

You see the Home page here and in Rewards you get your invite codes to share (each successful invite gives you 10 points). In Chats section you only can chat in the channels that you've subscribed, you can't see the other subscribers' messages in the channel unless the owner of the channel replies to them, not all the messages can be seen, only 50 or so!

Now that you have some info, it's time to explain some other things about alfafrens.

Interesting Things About @alafafrens

As I mentioned above, I'm new to all things about FC; I even didn't have a clue about Paragraph being available to a newcomer like me too! But I like to research before doing anything new and if could help anybody along the way, is a bonus.

First of all, the alfafrens.com is a pretty laggy website. It is not allowed in some countries so if you use a VPN make sure to change the server when you see that message. You have to refresh a lot to see the changes that you make to your account, like unsubscribing from a channel.

At its first days, you couldn't log in even with an invite code and you used to see a blank page with a lot of funny sentences which personally drove me mad!

I used to stare at these for at least 5 minutes and then give up. I should tell you they tried to make the signing in easier and now it's fine. When I logged in I knew nothing about anything and I just subscribed to a friend's channel. Funnily enough you don't have to pay the Subscription fee, just the gas fee.

Newcomers don't remember the high gas fees I'm sure! There are some hours of the day that you can claim $ALFA, stake on or subscribe to a channel with gas fees like 1-5 $DEGEN. But I've discovered that there are two or maybe three specific hours that you don't have to pay a gas fee to claim $ALFA, or maybe it's 0.00000x and it won't show (or maybe I'm lucky)!
If you've joined alfafrens recently then you're good. You have a small channel and things go smoothly AND you'll be on top of the high cashback or even high $ALFA rewards list.

But don't feel so sated yet!
As soon as your channel grows, everything goes to F-town. If you're not popular in Warpcast you'll go down the hill faster than you could say DEGEN! Why this happens?
Because you're giving out too much as your subscribers' number grow.
Their formulas are easy af but the branding that "you'll earn a lot" is just advertising.
Some may say to stake on your own channel to get more subscribers and more profits, but no! Don't just listen to a few people that have enough to invest! If you don't have enough DEGEN don't go there at all! Because if your DEGEN deposit hits zero all your subscriptions will unsub automatically.

Keep in mind that if you are in the High Cashback list, people find you and subscribe and if you don't deliver much and even be at the top of your game, still there are people who won't deposit more DEGEN and their subscription to your channel will be lost and you will be in the negative state soon. Obviously I didn't know this!

What I've understood from all the alfafrens experience is that if you're not popular in Warpcast or you don't give away high rewards in it to those who subbed and staked on your channel, you won't get anywhere.
With the last season's DEGEN cut-offs and new season's decay algorithm, how do you want to advertise for your own channel?
It's not clear when the $ALFA claim day (like $DEGEN claim) will come so don't think you're going to get paid soon! Everything is estimated so... you know what I mean!

If you're interested in the mathematics of the alfafrens there is another article here and in Warpcast by Vincent Chee that I share:

https://paragraph.xyz/@0x688390820b57cd65c1f76b5509ba28f79a343343/alfafrens-mechanics-101?referrer=0x688390820b57cd65c1f76b5509ba28f79a343343

Funny Things About @alafafrens

There are a few conspiracy theories that I've heard and some of them are really creative:
1. In the early days only a few people could join even with invite codes, the site had bugs and stuff so that only a few royal accounts could start their profit and so on!
2. The high gas fees made the owners rich!
3. Those who were early to this project knew the exact time of those hours of the lowest (almost nothing) gas fee so they didn't lose anything and deposited high amounts of DEGEN without difficulty!
4. If you don't have power badge you'll lose in alfafrens.
5. The friend.tech project was going to be more successful but because of some row or fight or something between some people, the alfafrens launched to get more attention and replace it!
6. They didn't explain everything at the very first to make people come and join and deposit and gave them false hopes!
7. Alfafrens will fail spectacularly in a few months and only the chosen ones will be richer than before and us mere mortals will disappear like dust in the wind!
8. They started alfafrens to get back what farmers took in degen tips without trying hard enough in Warpcast!

This post is just my personal experience and I don't claim to be a professional in anything. NO disrespect to anyone intended.

Thanks for reading.