X Shuts Down InfoFi Incentive Model, Ending the 'Mouth Mining' Era

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Ethan (@ethanzhang_web3)

Last night, an official product update from X caused a significant stir in the InfoFi community.

January 15, 10:39 PM, X PlatformAnnounce the revocation The API access of the InfoFi app was revoked, immediately affecting multiple applications that relied on "posting incentives." As the API was cut off, some projects announced the suspension of related features or adjustments in their business strategies. Tokens associated with these projects, represented by InfoFi, experienced a significant decline.Multiple InfoFi-related tokens (KAITO, COOKIE) experienced double-digit declines within a short period.Community members provided a rather straightforward summary—"The era of verbal grooming has ended."

The strong reactions from InfoFi-related applications and tokens indicate that this change has a much broader impact than a routine rule adjustment. It not only alters the foundational basis for these applications but also triggers a chain reaction in the market. This is not a minor tweak, but rather a clear statement from X regarding a specific application model.

This time, X left InfoFi little room for explanation.

X Product Owner Nikita Bier The platform posted that X is revising its developer API policies and willNo applications that offer rewards for users posting on X will be allowed to continue accessing the API.In his statement, such applications were directly named as infofi, which is alsoOne of the main sources of recent AI-generated garbage content and response pollution on the platform.

Unlike the platform's previous approach of "first announcing and then observing," this time X's actions are quite direct—The API access permission for the relevant InfoFi application has been revoked.The official explanation is also not complicated: external incentives are driving a large amount of task-based, templated content into the information stream, severely affecting the platform experience. Once bots realize "posting no longer brings money," X believes the content environment will quickly heal on its own.

It is worth noting that Nikita Bier specifically added a significant statement:InfoFi previously paid millions of dollars in fees for API access, but X does not need this source of revenue.

This statement itself has already provided a qualitative judgment on InfoFi's business model. Judging from the enforcement strength and the official wording, this adjustment is not merely targeting individual projects that abused the API; rather, it represents X's clear and unavoidable rejection of the core InfoFi model, in which external incentives directly influence content production on the platform.

For the team whose developer account was thus terminated, X's officially provided "post-incident solution" is equally intriguing: the platform will assist in transitioning their business to Threads and Bluesky. In other words, rather than attempting to reform or integrate this incentive mechanism, X has clearly chosen to abandon it.Move out of your own ecosystem as a whole..

If viewed solely from official statements, this adjustment appears to be a routine governance measure targeting AI-generated spam content. However, within the context of InfoFi, this rationale clearly does not sufficiently explain X's resolute stance.

The key issue may not lie in "whether the content is valuable," but rather in...Who produced the content, and for what reason?The core logic of InfoFi is to directly drive users to perform actions such as posting, replying, and interacting within the platform through external token or point incentives. While this model does indeed boost activity in the short term, it quickly transforms content creation into "task execution"—posting is no longer about expressing opinions, but rather a necessary step to claim rewards.

When the incentives themselves become detached from the platform's governance system, the platform inevitably loses control over the motivation and quality of content. InfoFi applications do not care whether a reply adds informational value; they only care whether it meets the conditions for "settlement." For X, this means that the information flow is being taken over by an external economic system.

From this perspective, AI-generated garbage content is merely a symptom, not the root cause. What truly crosses X's line is "The third-party incentive layer is directly integrated into the platform's content distribution system." This structural issue. Once this pattern is tolerated, the platform's content order, recommendation logic, and even user relationships will gradually be influenced by the incentive designers.

This also explains why X left almost no room for InfoFi in this adjustment. This means that, in X's assessment, InfoFi is not an ecosystem participant that needs to be corrected, but rather a...Content production paths that are no longer permitted to exist.

This is precisely why this API cleanup represents X's proactive reclaiming of its content sovereignty: when external incentives conflict with platform experience, X has chosen to cut off the former rather than cede control over the information flow.

X's API deprecation did not remain at the policy level; it quickly triggered a chain reaction on the InfoFi project side.

According to Odaily Planet Daily, the first to give a clear response was Cookie DAOAfter communicating with the X team regarding APIs and usage policies, the team announced the official shutdown of the Snaps platform and the termination of all ongoing creator incentive programs. In the announcement, Cookie stated directly that this was a "difficult and sudden" decision, but emphasized that the intention was not to abandon InfoFi, but rather to...Ensure that its data layer remains compliant with the core product..

From the wording, the shutdown of Snaps appears more like a passive decision to cut losses amid the impact of recent events. On one hand, Cookie emphasized that it has always used official data sources and remains an enterprise-level API client of X. On the other hand, the team clearly stated that InfoFi is undergoing structural changes, and whether Snaps can continue to exist in a "new form" still depends on further guidance from X. The phrasing itself already reveals a high level of uncertainty regarding the sustainability of the original incentive model.

By comparison,Kaito's adjustmentsThis move appears more proactive. Kaito announced the discontinuation of Yaps and the incentive ranking system, while launching a brand-new platform called Kaito Studio.Clearly bid farewell to the path of "open, permissionless incentive distribution."According to official statements, Kaito Studio will be closer to a traditional tiered marketing platform, where brands select creators to collaborate with based on established criteria. The platform's coverage will also expand from X to multiple social channels, including YouTube and TikTok.

In explaining the reasons for the transition, Kaito did not avoid addressing the inherent issues with the InfoFi model itself. He pointed out that even after continuously raising entry barriers and introducing screening mechanisms, low-quality content and traffic manipulation remained difficult to prevent. After discussions with X, the team also agreed that a "fully permissionless incentive distribution system" no longer aligned with the shared needs of the platform, brands, and creators. From the wording, it can be inferred that the end of Yaps likely represents an active abandonment of the original InfoFi approach.

Nevertheless, by examining these two incidents together, a clear trend emerges: when the platform layer clearly tightens interface and incentive boundaries, InfoFi projects either choose to pause their aggressive strategies and return to data and tool functionalities, or completely restructure their business logic to move closer to traditional marketing and content collaboration models.

So far, although the token price has fluctuated, a "collective crash" in InfoFi projects has not yet occurred. What is certain is that,The approach that relies on platform APIs and directly drives posting and interaction through external incentives is already difficult to sustain..

From the response to the InfoFi project, this change is not simply a "blockade" or a "failure." Whether it's Cookie returning to a data-layer positioning or Kaito shifting toward a Studio model closer to traditional marketing, these indicate that:InfoFi hasn't disappeared; it's just no longer viable to exist in the form of "in-platform incentive arbitrage."

The so-called "end of the era of comment-based rewards" does not mean the end of content quantification or influence being assigned a price. Rather, it signifies the decline of an open incentive model that relied on APIs and treated posting and replying as the actual units of exchange. Against the backdrop of platforms reasserting control, the margins and space for such a model are rapidly shrinking.

As for migrating to Threads or BlueskyIt is more like a buffer plan rather than the answer itself. The real question is whether future InfoFi can still find an irreplaceable value proposition without taking over the platform's content production rights.

X was just the first platform to explicitly press the button, but the signal it released has already been clear enough:Content sovereignty is gradually returning to the platforms' control.