Author: Nancy, PANews

Late at night on January 15, a silent "earthquake" struck the crypto Twitter circle (CT).

With X (formerly Twitter) announcing the termination of API access for the InfoFi application, the "tweet-to-mine" gameplay was abruptly halted, prompting project teams to pivot, while users lamented, "the sky has fallen."

Revocation of API Access, Refusal of Million-Dollar "Toll Fees"

The InfoFi sector underwent a dramatic shift overnight.

Nikita Bier, head of X's product and Solana ecosystem advisor, officially announced last night that the platform is revising its developer API policy, which will no longer allow applications that reward users for posting, directly naming InfoFi.

Nikita bluntly stated that such incentive mechanisms are the main culprits behind the flood of AI-generated spam and ineffective replies on the platform. Currently, X has revoked the API access for these applications, and once the bots realize they are no longer being rewarded, user experience should begin to improve quickly.

For developers with terminated accounts, Nikita also "thoughtfully" suggested that the team could help them transition their business to Meta's Threads and the decentralized social media Bluesky, which can be seen as a mocking remark.

More importantly, even though applications like InfoFi that frequently called the API contributed a significant amount of "toll fees," X resolutely chose to forgo them. "InfoFi applications have already paid us millions of dollars for enterprise-level API access. We do not want this money," Nikita's statement also indicated that user experience is currently X's strategic priority, especially since these revenues are negligible compared to X's overall annual revenue.

This officially marks the end of the InfoFi model that thrived on the X ecosystem, and the simple and crude era of "tweet mining" is gone for good.

In fact, this is not the first time Nikita has declared war on low-quality content.

Just recently, he criticized the trend of crypto tweets heading towards self-destructive extinction. Nikita stated that since last October, there has been a notion circulating in CT that users need to reply hundreds of times daily to achieve account growth; however, each post consumes part of the day's influence. Since ordinary users only browse 20 to 30 posts daily, the platform cannot display all of a user's posts to all their followers, leading crypto Twitter users to waste all their influence on hundreds of "gm" replies, with only a few people paying attention when they post substantial content like project announcements. The decline of crypto tweets stems from their own behavior rather than algorithm issues.

At the time, this tweet sparked strong dissatisfaction within the crypto community, even triggering a large-scale GM counterattack, ultimately leading to the tweet's deletion. However, it now appears that X's determination to clean up low-quality content had already been foreshadowed.

Ecological Projects Severing Ties to Survive, Teams Questioned for Early Selling

As X tightens its API policy, the InfoFi narrative is facing a cold wave.

According to CoinGecko data, in the past 24 hours, the market capitalization of the InfoFi sector has dropped to $350 million, with many tokens experiencing double-digit declines. Even the floor price of Kaito's Yapybaras NFT was not spared, plummeting sharply.

Under survival pressure, several InfoFi applications have announced their pivot.

Yu Hu, founder of the representative project Kaito, stated that the company will gradually terminate Yaps and the incentive 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 the crypto industry's shift from a high-frequency global distribution model to a more precise marketing direction. After discussions with the X platform, both parties reached a consensus: a completely unlicensed 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, which 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 into fields beyond cryptocurrency, such as finance and AI.

Meanwhile, Cookie DAO, after negotiations with the X team, decided to immediately shut down the Snaps platform and all creator activities. Cookie DAO stated that it will wait for X to confirm and provide guidance to determine whether creator activities similar to Snaps can operate in any form in the future. The platform is also directly communicating with all projects running Snaps activities. Some situations are complex, involving already paid activity fees and promised rewards. Although a complete solution has not yet been reached, the platform will adhere to principles of fairness and communicate directly with each project. The platform has archived snapshots of all active activities and will provide updates to creators as soon as possible. Other products under Cookie are unaffected. Additionally, the platform has been continuously developing the crypto real-time market intelligence tool Cookie Pro, which is planned to launch in the first quarter.

From the project team's statements, it appears that this policy adjustment was not a sudden black swan; the team was already aware of the changing winds and had laid the groundwork for a pivot in advance. This has also sparked market controversy, with the community questioning whether the project knew about the negative news in advance and sold off.

Taking Kaito as an example, its multi-signature contract address transferred a total of 24 million KAITO (approximately $13.31 million) to five addresses two weeks ago. Among them, according to crypto KOL "vasucrypto," an address associated with the Kaito team, starting with 0x049A, transferred 5 million KAITO to Binance seven days ago, possibly for sale. Even more intriguing, crypto KOL "Crypto Fearless" added that the unlocking of staked Kaito has also peaked in recent days. 1.1 million KAITO tokens will be unlocked tomorrow (January 17), with a de-staking period of seven days.

Farewell to the "Tweet Mining" Era, Late-Coming Content Justice

X's brutal industry purge is not only a platform rule adjustment but also a reshaping of the crypto content ecosystem.

For X, which heavily relies on advertising revenue and subscription services, facing external pressures such as slowing user growth, inefficient traffic monetization, and the strong rise of competitors, this adjustment is a necessary choice for survival. In fact, over the past few months, X has already begun to implement sweeping reforms in content and traffic distribution, including adjusting algorithm weights and increasing income for quality creators. Ultimately, the true target of X's actions is not solely the InfoFi model but rather the low-quality content that severely dilutes platform value and drives away real users.

For the crypto Twitter circle, this is also a long-overdue 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 brightly for a brief period, this mechanism was also distorted by "farming" behavior, with many profit-seekers crazily generating low-quality and repetitive spam to obtain rewards. This false traffic boom not only rendered content bland but also drowned out truly deep and valuable content in noise, accelerating the loss of real users.

This "ban" is undoubtedly a "noise filter" for CT users who have had enough of spam; the timeline can finally take a breath.

However, the decline in CT's popularity cannot be entirely attributed to InfoFi, as it is closely related to the overall downturn in the crypto industry. Even the viewership of crypto content on YouTube has dropped to its lowest level since January 2021.

Regardless, the end of the InfoFi model is an inevitable path to enhancing the readability of crypto content and returning to the essence of content. For InfoFi projects, when the shortcut of relying on the traffic of Web2 giants is cut off, how to establish a SocialFi mechanism based on the flow of real value is a pressing question that needs to be answered.

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