On January 21, 2026, X (formerly Twitter) introduced a new move at the product level: Nikita Bier, the product lead and also an advisor to the Solana ecosystem, announced the launch of a tool called Starterpacks and a large-scale overhaul of the account recommendation system for the first time in years. Under this new framework, the crypto industry starter packs are bundled into a "one-click follow for beginners" list, aggregating top accounts such as CZ, Brian Armstrong, Vitalik Buterin, Justin Sun, almost placing all mainstream crypto narratives front and center. This raises the question: Is this a "benefit accelerator" for new users, or a platform-led redistribution of crypto discourse power?
X Launches Starterpacks: One-Click Access to Mainstream Narratives for Beginners
● Function and Scenario: Starterpacks are designed as an entry tool that aggregates accounts by industry and country. New users can quickly gain information flow by following a bundle of accounts with one click upon registration or entering a specific vertical. From the actual usage path, it transforms "finding people to follow" into "pre-packaged selections by the platform," significantly lowering the threshold for crypto newcomers to filter information sources, and shifting the recommendation system from passive algorithmic push to active guided entry.
● Composition of the Crypto Industry Starter Pack: In the crypto vertical, the starter pack revolves around key figures, including Binance's CZ, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, and Tron founder Justin Sun. The list focuses on exchange leaders, core public chain figures, and a few super KOLs, presenting the characteristic of "one pack is a map of industry power," guiding new users almost immediately to these most influential nodes.
● Official and Media Narratives: The mainstream media evaluation of this product is that it "helps new users quickly discover opinion leaders in the mainstream crypto field" (according to Jinse Finance), depicting Starterpacks as a UX upgrade: allowing newcomers to take fewer detours and reduce information noise. X's official stance also emphasizes its ability to "aggregate quality accounts by industry," packaging this update as a dual enhancement of service quality and content discovery efficiency.
● Significance of the Recommendation System Upgrade: Research briefs indicate that this is X's first large-scale update to the account recommendation system in recent years. This means that Starterpacks are not just a small tool, but a systematic change that makes "who is pushed to new users" explicit from implicit traffic algorithms to "officially packaged lists," marking a new phase in the platform's content distribution mechanism: moving from fine-tuning the Timeline algorithm to a structural reshaping of discourse entry.
Algorithmic Selection or Manual Selection: Who Ranks the Crypto Circle
● Potential Selection Logic: Industry media generally cite the notion of "sorting top accounts based on traffic data from the past few months" (according to Rhythm) to explain the selection logic of Starterpacks. This statement points to a composite framework: summarizing the "top streamers" in each track based on historical traffic performance, interaction data, and existing influence, then solidifying it into an entry list. Even though specific weights and parameters are not disclosed, it can be reasonably inferred: those who attracted the most attention in the past few months are more likely to appear in this starter pack.
● Risk of Reinforcing the Matthew Effect: When the recommendation entry is based on "past traffic + existing influence," the platform's algorithm naturally amplifies the Matthew Effect—accounts with large followers and exposure will gain an additional layer of "newbie benefits" in Starterpacks, while smaller accounts are further pushed out of the new user’s view. For the crypto discourse ecosystem, this means that the distribution of traffic may accelerate its contraction from "long-tail diversity" to a pyramid structure that is "extremely concentrated at the top."
● Nikita Bier and Solana Association: The product lead Nikita Bier is also an advisor to the Solana ecosystem, which raises additional associations and questions in the crypto community. Although there is currently no evidence showing that a particular public chain or ecosystem is deliberately favored in the starter pack, having someone deeply involved in a specific ecosystem lead the recommendation entry in the crypto field objectively heightens market sensitivity to "whether ecological preferences will emerge," placing Starterpacks under more intense scrutiny.
● The Recommended List as "Official Ranking": Regardless of how X emphasizes algorithm neutrality, the list of Starterpacks itself constitutes a platform power ranking—who is in the pack, what position they occupy, and whether they are included in a particular industry list will all be interpreted as the platform's "implicit endorsement" of their influence and legitimacy. In an industry that heavily relies on social media to shape narratives, this official ranking further amplifies X's shaping power over crypto discourse, making "who can speak" not just a matter of natural market selection, but partially a selection by the platform.
Ethereum and Exchanges in the Spotlight: Who is Amplified, Who is Silenced
● Main Axis of Distribution: From the currently available information, the crypto Starterpacks clearly center around core figures from the Ethereum ecosystem and leaders of centralized exchanges: Vitalik represents the public chain technology and narrative hub, while CZ and Brian Armstrong correspond to spot trading, compliance entry, and global trading flow gateways. Although the complete list has not been disclosed, the pattern of "Ethereum/exchange dominance" is sufficient to outline the preferred power structure of Starterpacks.
● Marginalization of Developers and Niche Tracks: When representatives of "public chains + exchanges" occupy the C position in the starter pack, other types of roles—such as underlying developers, niche track builders, and grassroots community organizers—are easily marginalized in the new user’s view. For newcomers entering the crypto world for the first time, they see a pre-cropped industrial landscape designed by the platform: the main stage formed by chains and exchanges is infinitely amplified, while subfields like DeFi, NFTs, privacy technology, and public goods may be diluted to background noise.
● Solidifying the Old Order Rather Than Discovering New Voices: From the historical market influence pattern, Ethereum and leading exchanges have long occupied the traffic high ground. This starter pack resembles more of an "official confirmation of the existing pattern" rather than an opportunity window to "discover new voices." Starterpacks package the traffic winners of the past few years as the default starting point for future new users, freezing what could have been a new round of discourse power reshuffling through natural competition into a "reprint of the old order."
● Potential Games Around Seats: In this context, the seats in the starter pack may evolve into a focal point for a new round of resource competition. Project parties, PR agencies, and KOLs are no longer just "competing for attention" in topic lists, hot searches, and Spaces, but are motivated to strive for "entry into Starterpacks" and "front exposure." Even though there are currently no publicly reported cases of seat competition, the market can already imagine what kind of brand placements, relationship operations, and more covert influence transactions will emerge around this entry.
The Pull of Transparency and Bias: How the Recommended List is Questioned
● Source of Opacity: As of now, X has not disclosed the specific algorithm weight parameters for Starterpacks, nor has it revealed the complete account list and update rhythm. In the crypto industry, which is extremely sensitive to "rule transparency," this practice of "only providing results, not explaining the process" naturally creates a sense of opacity—the community cannot determine which indicators decided who was selected, nor can they verify whether the list has been subject to human intervention or structural bias.
● Conflict of Centralized Selection Philosophy: Starterpacks essentially represent a model of "centralized platform selecting for users," which stands in tension with the long-held crypto circle philosophy of "decentralization and self-selection of information sources." Users no longer freely explore from an open network but are directed by default to a few accounts with one click, shrinking the openness of the discourse entry to a pre-set path designed by the platform, which is clearly inconsistent with the blockchain world's emphasis on "trustlessness" and "anti-censorship" narratives.
● The Gray Area of Implicit Endorsement by the Platform: When a project or individual is included in the starter pack and continues to gain new user attention, if a project fails or a controversy arises in the future, it is hard for the market not to question: Is X effectively playing the role of "recommender" or even "endorser"? In the context of increasing regulatory scrutiny on platform responsibilities, the boundary issues of responsibility arising from the recommendation list will become a vague and sensitive gray area, potentially forcing X to institutionalize more designs for list updates and risk warnings in the future.
● Possible Improvement Directions Requested by the Community: In light of the doubts raised by opacity, the crypto community is likely to push the platform for a certain degree of openness, such as: disclosing some selection criteria and weight categories (rather than specific algorithm details), introducing user feedback and reporting mechanisms to influence subsequent recommendations, or allowing diverse lists—divided by niche tracks, ideological schools, and language regions—to avoid a single "overall list" monopolizing the entry. These directions do not aim to force X to fully open-source its algorithm, but rather to reduce the systemic bias risk brought by a single perspective within feasible limits.
Pressure on Newcomers and Old Players: Ecological Pressure After the Reordering of Traffic Entry
● Centralization of Newcomer Experience: For new users entering the crypto world after 2026, stepping into the industry through Starterpacks means that their information sources are highly centralized and mainstream from the very beginning. They see a narrative universe centered around leading public chain founders, exchange CEOs, and a very small number of global KOLs, obtaining a "standard version" of crypto stories that have been filtered multiple times by the platform and media, which lowers the entry cost while also weakening their opportunities to encounter non-mainstream viewpoints and marginal experiments.
● Pressure on Old Players and Mid-Tail KOLs: For old players and mid-tail KOLs who have been deeply engaged on X for many years, Starterpacks redefine the distribution path of new traffic—new fans that could have gradually accumulated through content quality and topic sensitivity are now directed to a few starter pack accounts right at the registration stage. The result is that the fan growth curve for mid-tail accounts may further slow down, and their discourse power is compressed into a smaller internal circle, presenting a trend where "the top becomes increasingly loud, while the long tail becomes increasingly silent."
● Shift in Project and Institutional PR Strategies: In this new landscape, project parties and institutions also face adjustments in their communication strategies: shifting from the past focus on topic lists, keywords, and KOL collaborations to thinking about how to "secure entry"—striving to establish closer cooperative relationships with starter pack accounts or trying to enter the visible range of relevant industry Starterpacks. Even if X has not disclosed any commercial interfaces, this imagination of "entry seats" is already sufficient to change the allocation direction of PR budgets, extending traffic purchases from "exposure positions" to "recommended name units."
From Social Tool to Traffic Gate: The Role Shift of X
Starterpacks has pushed X from a relatively neutral "information plaza" to a role more akin to that of a "discourse power distributor." By pre-packaging accounts at the new user entry point, the platform is no longer just passively sorting content at the algorithmic level, but actively planning "who gets seen first," setting the starting line for crypto discourse. For a social platform that is deeply embedded in the global crypto narrative, this role shift will reshape the perception of power and trust within the industry over a longer period.
In the future, the influence of algorithmic recommendations in the crypto discourse ecosystem will only amplify, accompanied by a continuous struggle around regulatory requirements, transparency pressures, and platform responsibility boundaries: regulators may focus on whether recommendations constitute some form of financial promotion or compliance obligation, while the community will continually question the legitimacy of algorithmic bias and list updates, and the platform will need to repeatedly weigh commercial interests, product efficiency, and reputational risks.
In this environment of increasing concentration, the crypto community is likely to explore hedging paths more actively: including building more mature decentralized social protocols, developing community-maintained open lists and reputation systems, and weakening the agenda control of any single platform through multi-platform operations. Starterpacks is not the end, but a reminder: when entry points are monopolized by a few platforms, finding a balance between efficiency and diversity will become an unavoidable common issue for the next stage of the crypto industry.
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