The United Kingdom has an opportunity to capitalize on the departure of Web3 firms leaving the United States due to regulatory uncertainty. But to achieve that, the U.K. will need to follow its own regulatory path, smoothing the requirements for crypto in some regard, according to a think tank.

On Oct. 2, the influential conservative think tank Policy Exchange published a report on Web3 with 10 proposals for the U.K. government, which it claims would help the country improve Web3 regulation.

One proposal made in the report is limiting the liabilities of individuals who hold tokens in a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The report cites a negative example of a recent ruling in the U.S. that makes any individual American who owns or previously owned tokens in a DAO liable for any violations of the law the DAO commits.

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The report also suggests the principal U.K. financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), loosens its current Know Your Customer (KYC) approach, allowing for the use of “alternative and innovative techniques,” such as digital identities and blockchain analytics tools.

The experts say the U.K. should avoid undermining self-hosted wallets and regulating proof-of-stake services as a financial service. Among other proposals are allowing private stablecoin issuers to place stablecoin reserves in the Bank of England, creating a “tax wrapper” for the crypto exchange and creating a new sandbox under the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Recently, U.K. regulators have taken a more stringent approach to the digital assets industry. His Majesty’s Treasury is considering banning all cold calls promoting crypto investments, and the FCA has warned local crypto businesses to follow its marketing rules or face consequences.

Less than three weeks after its launch, the decentralized social network Friend.tech has already been declared “dead” by critics,  following a recent drop in key metrics such as activity, inflows and volume.

Friend.tech had a buzzy beta version launch on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base on Aug. 11. A week later, its fees surpassed $1 million in 24 hours on Aug. 19 outshining Uniswap and the Bitcoin network.

However, its fees have since cratered. Daily fees peaked at $1.7 million on Aug. 21, but dropped over 87% to around $215,000 on Aug. 26 according to DefiLlama.

Transactions on Friend.tech also declined over 90% from the nearly 525,000 peak on Aug. 21 with just over 51,000 transactions on Aug. 27, Dune Analytics data complied by Crypto Koryo shows, leading many on X (Twitter) post condolences for the network.

RIP Friendtech

August 2023-August 2023 pic.twitter.com/Fb0bh23Fyo

— Beanie (@beaniemaxi) August 26, 2023

Friend.tech is centered on buying and selling “keys” that enable the buyer to send private messages to the seller, with the platform reportedly taking a 5% cut.

It’s attracted crypto and non-crypto influencers including UpOnly podcast host Cobie, YouTuber Faze Banks and Russian protest group Pussy Riot.

In an Aug. 27 X post, Coinbase payments risk manager Lisandro Rodriguez opined that the platform is “dead,” due mainly to “greed and poor execution.”

Friend tech is dead because of greed and poor execution. We can see that after the initial influencer pump volume has fallen off a cliff. Let’s dig into how this failure came to be pic.twitter.com/WDQncTQJ21

— Lisandro (@TheRealLisandro) August 27, 2023

Alongside the fee decline, buyers and sellers have also tanked, with Aug. 27 seeing around 10,000 buyers and 7,800 sellers compared to the Aug. 21 peak of over 58,000 buyers and 27,000 sellers, per Dune data.

Dune shows inflows have also taken a dive from the Aug. 21 high of $16.8 million with Friend.tech seeing around $1.6 million on Aug. 27 — a nearly 90.5% decrease.

Before the decline over the past week, some community members had already shared their bearish predictions for the platform.

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Last week, crypto commentator Yazan told Cointelegraph of factors that led him to believe Friend.tech had between six to eight weeks before it would see a decline in user key prices and activity.

Yazan said the user key price increases were unsustainable and questioned why so many would pay upwards of 1 Ether (ETH) “to be able to see a private chat.”

The platform has drawn parallels to the 2021 DeSo app BitCloud with pseudonymous Web3 marketer Legendary saying he believes Friend.tech “will collapse as BitClout did.”

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