Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher
At 1:16 AM Beijing time on January 16, the crypto industry was once again as the highly popular InfoFi narrative suddenly collapsed. Kaito, Cookie, and others successively announced the shutdown of InfoFi-related products and attempted to pivot, with their token prices plummeting by nearly 20% at one point.
And this was all triggered by 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 applications that reward users for posting on the X platform (e.g., "infofi"). This has led to the platform being flooded with a large amount of AI spam and reply spam.
"We have revoked the API access for these applications, so your X experience should start to improve soon (once the bots realize they are no longer being paid)." Nikita Bier said.
Since most InfoFi projects rely on the X product API to obtain user tweet data and determine reward schemes, once the API is disabled, the vast majority of content for such products will stop updating, losing their foundation.
An hour after the news was released, projects like Kaito and Cookie quickly issued response statements on their official Twitter accounts, showing that they had anticipated and prepared for this situation. Let's first see how they specifically responded.
Kaito: To Focus More on Areas Beyond Crypto
Kaito stated that in response to the large number of spam tweets, the project tried stricter eligibility reviews, higher leaderboard thresholds, social + on-chain screening mechanisms, and different incentive mechanisms. However, due to platform-wide X algorithm changes and the launch of other InfoFi projects with varying thresholds, the problem of low-quality and spam information remains widespread across the cryptocurrency field.
After discussions with the X team, both parties agreed that a completely permissionless distribution system is no longer feasible and does not meet the needs of high-quality brands, serious content creators, or X as a platform.
Next, Kaito will focus on launching Kaito Studio, which will be closer to a traditional tiered marketing platform where brands can selectively collaborate with creators based on established criteria and clear project scopes.
Kaito founder Yu Hu said that the past few months have been busy with the development of Kaito Studio, hence the low profile on social media and announcements, with little mention of project construction and strategic adjustments. Additionally, he personally met with some large brands outside the cryptocurrency field to learn from the successful experiences of traditional industry.
"We should no longer build and create for cryptocurrency, but for the broader world." Yu Hu believes that 2026 will be the year Kaito transcends CT as its main platform and cryptocurrency as its primary vertical.
Cookie: To Launch Real-Time Crypto Market Wallet Tool
Cookie posted that deciding to shut down the Snaps platform and all active creator campaigns was a difficult and sudden decision, but it was necessary to maintain the integrity of the Cookie data layer and products.
After discussions with the X team regarding its API and X usage policies, Cookie decided to immediately shut down Snaps and all ongoing activities.
However, the project still holds hope for the future of the Snaps product. "Currently, we are actively negotiating with X to determine if Snaps can continue to operate in a new form." Cookie believes, "We have always firmly believed that we fully comply with all of X's rules and policies. We will await confirmation and guidance from X on whether creator activities (such as Snaps) can operate in any form in the future."
At the same time, Cookie also proposed future product iteration plans, "For the past six months, we have been developing Cookie Pro—a real-time market intelligence tool for the cryptocurrency field, planned for official launch in the first quarter."
Has InfoFi Fallen?
It is undeniable that InfoFi has brought much vitality and change to the industry in recent years. It combines information and finance, creating a mechanism that evaluates user contributions based on the attention generated by their content (e.g., views, comments, and shares) and links it to token rewards.
In essence, InfoFi transforms attention from an abstract concept into quantifiable and tradable data. User participation shifts from simple content consumption to productive activity, and projects can more targetedly provide rewards to their content contributors.
However, when attention becomes the standard for rewards, the purpose of creating content now shifts from providing information or encouraging meaningful engagement to merely seeking rewards. And generative AI makes content creation easier, leading to the rapid spread of bulk content lacking real information or insight.
Several key members of the X team have mentioned the decline in Twitter content quality brought by InfoFi, so projects like Kaito have tried to optimize their algorithmic solutions, but never expected X to directly block this path from its foundation.
It is worth noting, however, that not all InfoFi projects incentivize users to post for rewards. For example, projects like xHunt and Ethos that rely on the X API primarily use the API to obtain tweet data for scoring and other operations. The impact of this X API policy adjustment on these projects is not yet known and requires further observation.
Additionally, some types of InfoFi projects mainly focus on the monetization of industry hotspot narratives, such as Noise and Narrative, and are expected to be largely unaffected.
Now that the InfoFi narrative has quickly collapsed, the attention economy and creator economy remain key focuses of the entire internet industry. In the future, InfoFi may reappear in front of the public in new forms and concepts.
