Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher
On the morning of January 16th, Beijing time, the cryptocurrency industry experienced another major shock. The highly popular InfoFi narrative, which had been all the rage since last year, collapsed almost instantly. Projects such as Kaito and Cookie subsequently announced the shutdown of their InfoFi-related products and attempts to pivot to new directions, with their token prices plummeting nearly 20% in the process.
This all started with a tweet from X product lead Nikita Bier. Nikita Bier stated that the team is revising its developer API policy and will no longer allow any apps (such as "infofi") that reward users for posting on the X platform. This has led to a flood of AI-generated spam and reply spam on the platform.
"We have revoked the API access of these applications, so your X experience should improve soon (once the bots realize they are no longer being rewarded)," said Nikita Bier.
Since most InfoFi projects rely on the X product API to obtain user tweet data and determine reward schemes, once the API is discontinued, the majority of these products will cease updates and lose their fundamental basis for existence.
An hour after the announcement, Kaito and major InfoFi projects like Cookie quickly issued response statements on their official X accounts, indicating that they had anticipated and prepared for this situation in advance. Let's first take a look at their specific responses.
Kaito: Expanding into More Areas Beyond Cryptocurrency
Kaito stated that in response to the large number of spam tweets, the project has tried stricter qualification reviews, higher leaderboard thresholds, a social + on-chain screening mechanism, and different incentive models. However, due to platform-wide changes in X's algorithm, as well as the launch of various InfoFi projects with varying thresholds, low-quality and spam content issues remain widespread across the entire cryptocurrency industry.
After discussions with the X team, both parties agreed that a completely permissionless distribution system is no longer viable and does not align with the needs of high-quality branding, serious content creators, or X as a platform.
Next, Kaito will focus on launching Kaito Studio, which will be more similar to a traditional tiered marketing platform, allowing brands to selectively collaborate with creators based on established criteria and clear project scopes.
Yu Hu, the founder of Kaito, mentioned that he has been busy with the development of Kaito Studio over the past few months, which is why he has been relatively low-key on social media and announcements, rarely discussing project construction and strategic adjustments. Additionally, he has personally met with several major brands outside the cryptocurrency industry to learn from the success experiences of traditional sectors.
"We should no longer build and create solely for cryptocurrency, but instead build and create for a broader world," Yu Hu believes that 2026 will be the year when Kaito surpasses CT as its primary platform and extends beyond cryptocurrency as its main vertical field.
Cookie: Real-time Encrypted Market Wallet Tool to Be Launched
Cookie stated that the decision to shut down the Snaps platform and all active creator activities was a difficult and sudden one, but necessary to maintain the integrity of Cookie's data layer and products.
After discussions with the X team regarding their API and X usage policies, Cookie has decided to immediately shut down Snaps and all ongoing activities.
However, the project still holds hope for the future of Snaps. Cookie stated, "Currently, we are actively in discussions with X to determine whether Snaps can continue to operate in a new form. We have always firmly believed that we fully comply with X's rules and policies. We will await X's confirmation and guidance regarding whether creator activities such as Snaps can operate in any form in the future."
At the same time, Cookie has also announced its future product development plans: "Over the past six months, we have been developing Cookie Pro, a real-time market intelligence tool for the cryptocurrency industry, which is scheduled to be officially launched in the first quarter."
Is InfoFi a thing of the past?
There is no doubt that InfoFi has brought much vitality and transformation to the industry in recent years. ItBy combining information and finance, a mechanism is created to evaluate user contributions based on the attention generated by user content (such as page views, comments, and shares), and to link this evaluation with token rewards.
Fundamentally, InfoFi transforms attention from an abstract concept into quantifiable and tradable data. User participation shifts from passive content consumption to productive activities, allowing project teams to more precisely reward their content contributors.
However, when attention becomes the standard for rewards, the purpose of content creation has shifted from providing information or encouraging meaningful engagement to merely pursuing rewards. Meanwhile, generative AI makes content creation easier, allowing mass-produced content lacking genuine information or insight to spread rapidly.
X several key team members have mentioned that The quality of Twitter content has declined due to InfoFi, so projects like Kaito have attempted to optimize their algorithmic approaches. However, X has directly blocked this path at its very foundation.
It is worth noting, however, that not all InfoFi projects incentivize users to post content for rewards. For example, projects like xHunt and Ethos, which rely on the X API, primarily obtain tweet data through the API for scoring and other operations. The impact of this recent X API policy change on these projects remains uncertain and requires further observation.
In addition, some types of InfoFi projects mainly focus on monetizing industry hot topics and narratives, such as Noise and Narrative. These projects are expected to be largely unaffected.
InfoFi Project List Source:RootData
Nowadays, the InfoFi narrative is rapidly collapsing, but the attention economy and creator economy remain one of the key focuses of the entire internet industry. In the future, InfoFi might still reappear in front of the public in new forms and concepts.