Friends With Benefits (FWB) Matures Into a Leading Social DAO

Once a niche social token experiment, Friends With Benefits has evolved into a fully-fledged decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a thriving ecosystem. As of April 2025, the community boasts over 10,000 active members and has successfully launched multiple Web3 initiatives, including a creator grants program and an educational platform. The FWB token has seen consistent growth, with its utility expanding beyond simple membership access to include governance rights and premium content curation. This maturation reflects the broader trend of social tokens transitioning from speculative assets to functional components of decentralized communities.

Bresnitz stresses that Friends With Builders is definitely not a hackathon.

“The general model of the hackathon doesn’t work. You get eight hours at a conference, 48 hours to build it and then get the prize money. That only speaks to a certain type of builder who can work intensively over 48 hours,” Bresnitz said.

With Friends With Builders, the reward is the developed product, not the prize and gong given out by the hackathon organizers. It’s also focused on products where the Web 3 technology is under the hood, rather than the thing itself.

“Someone could come in and build the 700th DeFi platform and we’re not going to stop them. They totally can. That’s great. But, for me, personally, what I believe the industry needs is to bundle all this up into something that feels totally normal,” Bresnitz said.

He points to projects like Blackbird, the restaurant loyalty app, as an example of the type of product Friends With Builders wants to incubate. Blackbird is useful and has mainstream appeal, and the crypto element (it has a cryptocurrency called FLY) is de-emphasized. The point is utility, not that it’s crypto.

“We need a new type of person in this space,” Bresnitz said. “The persona of FWB has always been creative technologist. These are people who understand what people want and they’re looking for technology to support that. That’s different from what we see oftentimes [in crypto], which is ‘we built a hammer that’s also a screwdriver, who wants it?’”

Bresnitz argues that crypto has created great tooling infrastructure for builders. Now it needs to develop products that de-emphasize the technology. Builders in his program will have access to founders at the partner groups via Discord and meetups. They’ll receive developer credits and be able to tap extensive DevRel (developer support).

Friends With Builders will run in quarters 1, 2 and 4. Quarter 3 will be left for FWB’s annual FEST gathering in California, where the builders will showcase their work. Base, a key FWB partner, holds its annual get-together, Base Camp, at the same location (near Idyllwild) shortly before FEST begins.

As a pilot for the new program, FWB recently organized a cohort with World (previously Worldcoin). FWB/World received 140 applications and the participating builders created 40 new mini-apps. The builders flew to Buenos Aires to take part in Crecimiento, and now some will take part in a demo day in New York on May 21. Two of those projects already have term sheets from investors.

Bresnitz is a strong advocate for his initiative. But he also displays a humility toward crypto that isn’t always evident in conversations with other founders. He believes Web3 has yet to show what it can really do for the world.

“We haven’t cracked the code yet. This to me is about saying ‘can we try something different?’”