Author: Nancy, PANews
Original Title: 'Talk-to-Earn' Players' 'World Collapses'! Twitter Bans InfoFi, Ecosystem Projects Forced to Adapt Drastically
On the night of January 15th, the crypto Twitter circle (CT) was suddenly hit by a silent 'earthquake'.
With X (formerly Twitter) issuing an announcement cutting off API access for InfoFi applications, the 'post-to-earn' mechanism was brought to a halt. Project teams are choosing to pivot, while 'talk-to-earn' players exclaim that 'the sky has fallen'.
Revoking API Access, Rejecting Millions in 'Toll Fees'
The InfoFi sector changed overnight.
X's Product Lead and Solana Ecosystem Advisor, Nikita Bier, officially announced last night that the platform is revising its developer API policy and will no longer allow applications that reward users for posting, directly naming InfoFi.
Nikita stated bluntly that such incentive mechanisms are the root cause of the platform being flooded with a large amount of AI-generated spam and low-quality replies. Currently, X has revoked the API access permissions for these applications. Once the bots realize they are no longer being paid, the user experience should begin to improve soon.
For developers whose accounts were terminated, Nikita also 'thoughtfully' suggested that teams could help them transition their business to Meta's Threads and the decentralized social media platform Bluesky, a comment full of sarcasm.
More importantly, X resolutely chose to forgo this revenue, even though high-frequency API-calling applications like InfoFi contributed significant 'toll fees'. "InfoFi applications were already paying us millions of dollars for enterprise API access. We don't want that money," Nikita said. This statement also indicates that user experience is X's current strategic priority, especially since these earnings are insignificant compared to X's overall annual revenue.
This officially宣告 (declares) the end of the InfoFi model寄生 (parasitizing) the X ecosystem. The simple and brutal 'talk-to-earn' era is gone for good.
In fact, this is not the first time Nikita has 'declared war' on low-quality content.
Not long ago, he criticized crypto tweets for heading towards suicidal demise. Nikita posted at the time that since last October, a notion has been spreading within CT that users need to reply hundreds of times a day to achieve account growth. However, each post consumes part of the day's influence. Since the average user only browses 20 to 30 posts per day, the platform cannot show all posts from one user to all their followers. Therefore, crypto Twitter users end up wasting all their influence on hundreds of 'gm' replies. When they post substantive content like project announcements, very few people see it. The decline of crypto tweets stems from their own behavior, not algorithm issues.
This post sparked strong dissatisfaction within the crypto community at the time, even leading to a large-scale 'GM' counter-attack, which eventually resulted in the tweet being deleted. But in hindsight, X's determination to clean up low-quality content had already been foreshadowed.
Ecosystem Projects Make Drastic Survival Moves, Teams Accused of Dumping Tokens Early
As X tightens its API policy, the InfoFi narrative is facing a cold spell.
CoinGecko data shows that in the past 24 hours, the market capitalization of the InfoFi sector fell to $350 million, with many tokens experiencing double-digit declines. Even the floor price of Yapybaras NFT from Kaito couldn't escape, plummeting.
Faced with a survival test, multiple InfoFi applications have announced pivots.
Yu Hu, founder of the representative project Kaito, stated that the company will gradually terminate Yaps and the incentivized leaderboard system, instead launching a new Kaito Studio. This decision stems from the platform's issues with low-quality content and spam, as well as a shift in the crypto industry from a high-frequency global distribution model towards more precise marketing. After discussions with the X platform, both parties reached a consensus: a completely permissionless distribution system is no longer viable and does not meet the needs of high-quality brands, serious content creators, or the X platform itself. Over the past few months, the platform has been developing Kaito Studio. This product will adopt a layered traditional marketing model, connecting brands with high-quality creators through top-tier analytical tools, covering multiple platforms like X, YouTube, TikTok, and expanding beyond cryptocurrency into areas like finance and AI.
Meanwhile, Cookie DAO, after consulting with the X team, decided to immediately shut down the Snaps platform and all creator activities. Cookie DAO stated it will wait for confirmation and guidance from the X platform to determine if creator activities similar to Snaps can operate in any form in the future. Simultaneously, the platform is communicating directly with all project teams running Snaps activities. Some situations are more complex, involving pre-paid activity fees and promised rewards. While full solutions are not yet available, they will adhere to principles of fairness and communicate directly with each project. The platform has taken snapshot archives of all active activities and will provide updates to creators as soon as possible. Other products under Cookie are unaffected. Additionally, over the past six months, the platform has been continuously developing Cookie Pro, a crypto real-time market intelligence tool, planned for launch in the first quarter.
Judging from the project teams' statements, this policy adjustment is not a sudden black swan event; the teams were already aware of the changing winds and had布局 (laid out plans for) a pivot in advance. This has also sparked market controversy, with the community质疑 (questioning) whether projects knew about the negative news in advance and dumped their tokens.
Taking Kaito as an example, its multi-signature contract address distributed and transferred a cumulative 24 million KAITO (approx. $13.31 million) to 5 addresses two weeks ago. Among them, according to monitoring by crypto KOL "vasucrypto", the 0x049A address associated with the Kaito team transferred 5 million KAITO to Binance 7 days ago, possibly for sale. More intriguingly, crypto KOL "加密无畏" (Crypto Fearless) added that Kaito's staking unlocks also peaked in the past few days. 1.1 million KAITO tokens are also scheduled to unlock tomorrow (January 17th), with the unstaking period being 7 days.
Farewell to the 'Talk-to-Earn' Era, Long-Overdue Content Justice
X's brutal industry purge is not just an adjustment of platform rules but also a reshaping of the crypto content ecosystem.
For X, which highly relies on advertising revenue and subscription services, facing external pressures like slowing user growth, inefficient traffic monetization, and the strong rise of competitors, this adjustment is an inevitable choice for survival. In fact, over the past few months, X has already begun making sweeping reforms in content and traffic distribution, including adjusting algorithm weights and increasing revenue for high-quality creators. Ultimately, X's true target is not solely the InfoFi model, but the low-quality content that severely dilutes the platform's value and drives away real users.
For the crypto Twitter circle, this is also a long-overdue form of content justice. Although the original intention of the InfoFi model was to encourage creators to produce high-quality content through token incentives, and it did shine briefly, this mechanism was also hijacked by 'airdrop farming' behavior, where a large number of profit-seekers疯狂制造 (frantically produced) low-quality and repetitive spam information. This false流量繁荣 (traffic prosperity) not only made content dull but also caused truly deep and valuable content to be drowned out by noise, accelerating the loss of real users.
This 'ban' is undoubtedly a 'noise filter' for CT users who are tired of spam; their timelines can finally catch a breath.
However, the decline in CT's热度 (heat) is not entirely attributable to InfoFi; it is also closely related to the overall downturn cycle of the crypto industry. Even the viewership of crypto content on YouTube has fallen to its lowest level since January 2021.
Regardless, the end of this InfoFi model is a necessary path to improving the readability of crypto content and returning to the essence of content. For InfoFi projects, now that the shortcut of寄生 (parasitizing) Web2 giant traffic has been cut off, how to establish a SocialFi mechanism based on the flow of real value is a难题 (challenge) that urgently needs answering.
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