Author: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily
On January 22, the X platform updated its "Global Trends" page. Following a series of adjustments related to content and incentives, Odaily Planet Daily found that the platform had added a newly separated Meme category. Various memes, humorous images, and short videos are now centralized in this section, allowing users to clearly see the current Meme themes and emotional trends spreading both within and outside the platform.
At first glance, this seems more like a lighthearted content curation. However, when viewed in the context of X's recent intensive efforts in content governance, the emergence of this Meme section appears less trivial.
Within X's product logic, content is being re-stratified: what belongs to emotional expression and what is considered informational assets— the platform is beginning to define clearer boundaries through its interface and categorization itself.
Against this backdrop, X has recently gradually tightened its creator incentives and API usage policies, explicitly stating that replies and interactions will no longer contribute to revenue. Ultimately, the platform has directly targeted the InfoFi application model, which relies on external incentives to drive posting and engagement. Within the crypto community, these changes have been quickly interpreted as a signal: the platform is no longer willing to allocate space for a content strategy characterized by "high engagement but low information density."
From the details of the Meme being singled out, X's recent adjustment is not merely closing the old mechanism, but simultaneously building a new content order.
Why does "zhuilu" (a slang term for circumventing censorship) become ineffective? X's answer is more direct than "rate limiting."
In the past week, X has indicated through a series of mutually reinforcing rule adjustments that X is redefining what kind of behavior is worth pricing.
The change is first reflected in the creator revenue rules. On January 19, X product lead Nikita Bier clearly stated in response to user concerns that currently, creator earnings are calculated solely based on the number of views their content receives on the home timeline. Exposures generated from replies are no longer counted toward revenue. This is almost equivalent to directly overturning a long-standing, default assumption about growth logic — that interactions themselves no longer hold monetization value.
X Product Lead Nikita Bier responds to user questions on X.
Under the new pricing system, whether it's high-frequency replies, concentrated screen refreshing, or relying on low-cost content such as "gm" or "+1" to maintain activity, if the content cannot be promoted into the homepage timeline, it will no longer be considered as effective contribution by the platform.
This change did not occur in isolation. In subsequent explanations, X further elaborated on the underlying logic: the amount of content an average user can actually consume in a day is extremely limited. Posting excessively or interacting frequently does not expand one's influence; instead, it prematurely depletes the account's daily exposure quota. When truly important content is posted, the account often has "no remaining quota" left.
In other words, in X's assessment, excessive interaction is not suppressed, but rather regarded as an inefficient, and even self-detrimental, behavioral pattern.
This position also resonates with Nikita Bier's previous public criticisms of the crypto community. In his view, the decline in the influence of crypto-related tweets is not due to deliberate suppression by platform algorithms, but rather a result of the community's long-term reliance on low-value interactions, leading to self-depletion.
From the outcome, X did not deny the existence of "troll farming," but instead chose a more direct and composed approach: no longer paying for such behavior.
When the view count is completely removed from the incentive system, the content model that relies on interaction for profit naturally loses its foundation. The so-called "end of the lip-flipping era" is not a targeted cleanup, but an inevitable outcome following the adjustment of the pricing system.
The real background behind the emergence of Smart Cashtags: X wants to turn "market sentiment" into a consumable object.
While reshaping creator incentive rules, X is also advancing another more directional product path in parallel—Smart Cashtags.
According to Nikita Bier, a product lead at X, this feature allows users to directly tag specific tokens or smart contracts when sharing market updates or content related to assets. When users click on these tags in their timelines, they can view the real-time price of the corresponding asset, as well as all related discussions within the platform. The feature is still in the testing and feedback phase. The official team has clearly announced the launch of a V1 version and provided a relatively clear timeline for its release (expected to be next month).
This means that Smart Cashtags are no longer just a proof of concept, but have entered the final refinement phase before finalizing their features.
Related tweets and Smart Cashtags test page
Initially, the community viewed it more as a market data tool that enhances user experience. However, as discussions deepened, the focus of doubts gradually shifted to several more fundamental issues:
— If the asset is not yet listed on major exchanges, does X have reliable data coverage?
-- Are its price and on-chain information dependent solely on centralized exchanges?
— Will the future further extend to the wallet or transaction execution layer?
Regarding the first two questions, Nikita Bier provided relatively clear responses. He stated that X's API can "process almost in real-time anything that is minted on-chain," implying that the data source for Smart Cashtags is not limited to centralized trading platforms, but instead has the capability to directly access on-chain information.
As for whether X supports self-hosted wallets or enables trading within the app via CEX widgets, he did not give a direct response, merely replying with an "eyes" emoji. This deliberate ambiguity has instead sparked more speculation within the community about X's next moves.
Putting Smart Cashtags back into X's existing strategic trajectory, this "white space" is not out of place.
By 2025, X had gradually obtained remittance-related licenses in over 40 U.S. states and was simultaneously advancing the compliance construction of the X Money payment system. At that time, these moves were largely seen as part of the "Everything App" narrative and still seemed distant from the content ecosystem.
As of January 2026, the development pace of Smart Cashtags began to become clearer: features were first publicly discussed, followed by detailed explanations of the API layer, with additional information about compliance and legal aspects emerging in between. By late January, although still in the testing phase, the official had already released a clear timeline expectation.
Odaily Planet Daily believes this further indicates that Smart Cashtags is not an isolated product attempt, but rather X is proactively laying the infrastructure for the integration of "content × finance."
When viewed alongside adjustments such as creator incentive policies and the InfoFi API cleanup, its positioning becomes clear: X is not in a rush to directly engage in transaction execution, but is instead attempting to consolidate assets, pricing, and market sentiment into a single clickable, trackable content node.
Under this structure, the value of content is no longer simply determined by engagement metrics, but rather by its ability to form a continuous, consumable stream of information and narratives around a particular asset. In this sense, Smart Cashtags are not tools designed for "meme-chasing" or superficial engagement, but rather reserved entry points for specific types of content.
After the algorithm's "lid was lifted," the right to exposure has not become more democratic.
In addition to Smart Cashtags, another frequently mentioned recent change on X is the official open-sourcing of its recommendation algorithm.
In late January, the X engineering team announced that they had made the latest version of their platform's algorithm publicly open source, using the same Transformer architecture as the Grok model under xAI. Shortly after, Elon Musk candidly stated that the algorithm was still "quite clumsy," but open-sourcing it meant users could clearly see its optimization path. For a long time, content suppression and topic censorship have often been attributed to "black box algorithms." With algorithmic transparency, at least the rules are no longer hidden and the path becomes traceable.
X's Public Latest Platform Algorithm Github Homepage
However, open-sourcing an algorithm does not mean that the right to exposure is equally distributed.
At the same time, X was advancing a systematic upgrade to its "interest discovery" mechanism. The core goal was to help new accounts quickly find content they are interested in, without having to spend a long time following and filtering. The algorithm, when organizing the timeline, shifted from relying solely on "who you follow" to "what the system thinks you might want to see."
Under this framework, whether content receives exposure depends on two key criteria: understandability and consumability.
- Understandability: The content is well-structured, information is complete, and it is easy for algorithms to identify and categorize.
- Consumability: The content can be absorbed, understood, and interacted with by users in a short period of time, forming an effective information flow.
In other words, visibility is no longer determined by "engagement volume," but rather by whether the content can be efficiently identified, distributed, and attract audiences by the system. This marks a shift for the platform from the previous model of "the more active, the more visible" to a distribution logic centered on the intrinsic value of the content itself.
When the platform simultaneously tightens interaction incentives, structures asset narratives, and enhances interest-based recommendation mechanisms, a new filtering logic has already taken shape. Under this system, it is no surprise that "zhuilu" (a term implying superficial or low-quality content creation) is naturally excluded from the mainstream exposure pathways.
Conclusion: This is not just talk, but a revaluation of content's worth.
From tightening creator incentive policies and open-sourcing algorithms, to gradually advancing the Smart Cashtags feature, and on January 22nd, when the Meme section was separately established, X is gradually piecing together a clear path.
Low-value interactions are being stripped away, assets and emotions are being restructured, and algorithms and interest-discovery mechanisms are being brought to the forefront—these adjustments collectively point to a core outcome: the platform is redefining what kind of content is worth distributing, pricing, and being seen.
Under the new order, memes are categorized as emotional expressions, while financial and cryptocurrency content is required to have clear structure and direction. The right to exposure has shifted from "who is more active" to "who is easier to understand and consume." Platforms no longer pay for noise or mere participation.
As previously analyzed in an article by Odaily Planet Daily, "X Personally Ends the InfoFi Incentive Model, the Era of Lip-Smacking Comes to an End," the end of the lip-smacking era is not an endpoint, but rather the first perceptible signal of X's reconstruction of its content value system. With the new rules in place, the platform is building a value system that increasingly focuses on the content itself, rather than on interactive behaviors.
For creators and the industry, this means that visibility on X in the future will no longer depend on quantity, but rather on whether the content can be recognized by algorithms, absorbed by the audience, and generate sustainable value. This new paradigm represents both a reclaiming of platform sovereignty and a profound reshaping of the content ecosystem.