Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Ethan (@ethanzhang_web3)
Last night, a product update from X's official channels caused quite a stir within the InfoFi community.
At 22:39 on January 15th, platform X announced the revocation of API access permissions for InfoFi applications, immediately affecting multiple apps reliant on "posting incentives." As the API was cut off, some projects announced the suspension of related functions or adjustments to their business directions. InfoFi-related tokens saw significant declines, with multiple InfoFi-related tokens (KAITO, COOKIE) recording double-digit percentage drops in a short period. Community members offered a rather straightforward summary – "The era of 'mouth farming' is over."
The strong reaction from InfoFi-related applications and tokens indicates that the impact of this change far exceeds a routine rule adjustment. It has altered the operational foundation of related applications and triggered a chain reaction in the market. This is not a minor tweak but a clear statement from X regarding a specific category of application models.
What Happened: X Formally Rejects the InfoFi Incentive Model
This time, X did not leave much room for explanation for InfoFi.
X's Product Lead, Nikita Bier, posted on the platform stating that X is revising its developer API policy and will no longer allow any applications that "reward users for posting on X" to continue accessing the API. In his statement, these applications were directly labeled as infofi and identified as a primary source of the recent AI spam content and reply pollution on the platform.
Unlike the "announce first, observe later" approach of previous platform governance, X's action this time was quite direct – API access permissions for related InfoFi applications have been revoked. The official reason given is also not complicated: external incentive mechanisms are driving a flood of task-oriented, templated content into the information feed, severely impacting the platform experience. X believes that once bots realize "there's no more money to be made from posting," the content environment will quickly self-correct.
It is worth noting that Nikita Bier specifically added a rather weighty statement: InfoFi applications had previously paid millions of dollars for API access, but X does not need this revenue.
This statement itself almost serves as a qualitative judgment on InfoFi's business model. Judging from the execution force and official wording, this adjustment is not targeting individual projects abusing the API but is rather a clear and unavoidable negative answer from X regarding the core InfoFi model of "external incentives directly intervening in platform content production."
The "aftermath solution" offered by X's official channels for teams whose developer accounts were terminated is equally telling: the platform will assist their business transition to Threads and Bluesky. In other words, X did not attempt to reform or absorb this incentive mechanism but clearly chose to remove it entirely from its own ecosystem.
What's Being Rejected is Not Content, But InfoFi's Incentive Path
If we only look at the official statement, this adjustment might seem like routine governance targeting AI spam content. But in the context of InfoFi, this reason is clearly insufficient to explain X's resolute stance.
The key issue might not be "whether the content has value," but rather who produces the content and why. The core logic of InfoFi is to directly drive users to perform actions like posting, replying, and interacting on the platform through external token or point incentives. While this model确实 boosts activity in the short term, it also rapidly alienates content production into "task execution." Posting is no longer about expressing opinions but a necessary step to claim rewards.
When the incentive itself is detached from the platform's governance system, the platform inevitably loses control over the motivation and quality of content. InfoFi applications don't care if a reply adds informational value; they only care if it meets the conditions for "settlement." For X, this means the information feed is being taken over by an external economic system.
From this perspective, AI spam is a consequence, not the cause. What truly crosses X's bottom line is the structural problem of "a third-party incentive layer being directly embedded into the platform's content distribution system." Once this model is tacitly approved, the platform's content order, recommendation logic, and even user relationships will gradually be influenced by the incentive designers.
This also explains why X, in this adjustment, left almost no room for InfoFi to reform. It implies that, in X's judgment, InfoFi is not an ecological participant that needs correction but rather a content production path that is no longer permitted to exist.
It is also why this API purge is an active reclamation of X's content sovereignty: when external incentives conflict with the platform experience, X chooses to cut off the former rather than cede control of the information feed.
From "Shutdown" to "Restructuring": The Collective Pivot of InfoFi Projects
X's API revocation did not remain at the policy level; it quickly triggered a chain reaction on the InfoFi project side.
According to Odaily Planet Daily's understanding, the first to provide a clear response was Cookie DAO. After communicating with the X team regarding the API and usage policy, the team announced the official shutdown of the Snaps platform and the termination of all ongoing creator incentive activities. Cookie stated bluntly in the announcement that this was a "difficult and sudden" decision, but the出发点 was not to abandon InfoFi but to ensure its data layer and core products remain compliant.
Judging from the wording, the shutdown of Snaps seems more like a passive choice to mitigate losses under the impact of the event. On one hand, Cookie emphasized that it always uses official data sources and remains an enterprise-level API client of X; on the other hand, the team also clearly stated that InfoFi is undergoing structural changes, and whether Snaps can exist in a "new form" still depends on further guidance from X. This wording itself reveals high uncertainty about the sustainability of the original incentive model.
In contrast, Kaito's adjustment appears more proactive. Kaito announced the cessation of Yaps and the incentive leaderboard, simultaneously launching a new Kaito Studio, explicitly bidding farewell to the "open, permissionless incentive distribution" path. According to the official statement, Kaito Studio will be closer to a traditional tiered marketing platform, where brands select creators for collaboration based on established criteria, covering platforms extending from X to YouTube, TikTok, and other social channels.
In explaining the reason for the pivot, Kaito did not avoid the problems of the InfoFi model itself. It pointed out that even after continuously raising thresholds and introducing screening mechanisms, low-quality content and刷量行为 (brushing/artificial inflation) were still hard to avoid; after communicating with X, the team also agreed that a "completely permissionless incentive distribution system" no longer meets the common needs of the platform, brands, and creators. Reading between the lines, it can be inferred that the end of Yaps is an active abandonment of the original InfoFi路线 (path).
But in any case, looking at both events together, a clear trend emerges: as the platform layer clearly tightens interface and incentive boundaries, InfoFi projects either choose to pause激进玩法 (aggressive playstyles) and return to data and tool attributes, or simply restructure their business logic, moving closer to models more akin to traditional marketing and content cooperation.
Currently, although token prices have fluctuated, a "collective collapse" of InfoFi projects has not yet occurred. What is certain is that the set of strategies reliant on platform APIs, driving posts and interactions directly through external incentives, can hardly continue to operate.
Conclusion: The Era of 'Mouth Farming' Ends, But InfoFi's Problems Remain
Judging from the reactions of the InfoFi projects, this change is not simply a "ban" or a "failure." Whether it's Cookie returning to its data layer positioning or Kaito pivoting to a Studio model closer to traditional marketing, it indicates that: InfoFi has not disappeared; it just can no longer exist in the form of "in-platform incentive arbitrage."
The so-called "end of the mouth farming era" does not mean the end of content being quantified or influence being priced, but rather the end of that open incentive path reliant on APIs, where the act of posting and replying itself was the settlement object. Against the backdrop of platforms reasserting sovereignty, the marginal space for this model is rapidly shrinking.
As for migrating to Threads or Bluesky, it seems more like a buffer solution than an answer itself. The real question is whether future InfoFi can find an irreplaceable value position without taking over the platform's content production rights.
X is just the first platform to explicitly press the button, but the signal it sends is clear enough: Content sovereignty is returning to the platforms.
