InfoFi Model Collapse: What’s Next for $KAITO and Crypto’s Attention Economy
January 16, 2026
The InfoFi narrative is unraveling in real time.
What began with Kaito officially sunsetting Yaps and incentivized leaderboards has now spread across the sector. $KAITO sold off. Then $COOKIE followed. And suddenly, the market is confronting a reality it’s been slow to price in:
👉 This isn’t a token problem. It’s a model failure.
The Catalyst Was Public. The Pivot Wasn’t
The immediate trigger is well known. X revoked API access for apps that reward users for posting, citing AI-generated spam and low-quality engagement. That decision effectively removed the distribution layer InfoFi depended on.
But here’s what most missed.
Kaito’s pivot wasn’t reactive.
Within minutes of announcing the shutdown of Yaps, Kaito Studio was already positioned as the next phase. That kind of transition doesn’t happen overnight. It strongly suggests:
- The new model was designed months in advance
- Teams and partners were already aligned
- The transition mechanics were pre-negotiated
While timelines were unfolding publicly, the builders already knew the endgame.
Crypto Twitter Did What It Always Does
The market response followed a familiar script:
- Read the headline
- Short the token aggressively
- Assume product dead = token dead
Classic.
Price action became the story — but price action wasn’t the signal. The signal was structural.
Why InfoFi Actually Broke
To understand what’s happening now, it’s important to be precise.
InfoFi didn’t fail because of one platform policy.
It failed because of how the model was designed.
At its core, InfoFi optimized for:
- Activity over outcomes
- Volume over relevance
- Incentives over intent
Once AI entered the loop, that design collapsed. Automated posting diluted signal quality, platforms pushed back, and the entire reward logic broke down.
This isn’t new.
Crypto has seen this movie before:
- Play-to-Earn optimized for grinding, not retention
- Learn-to-Earn optimized for clicks, not comprehension
- Social mining optimized for noise, not trust
InfoFi followed the same path — attention without durable value creation.
What Kaito Studio Actually Represents
Kaito’s response was not to patch the old model, but to abandon it entirely.
Kaito Studio is positioned as:
- A tier-based creator platform
- Where brands select creators directly
- Focused on analytics, relevance, and measurable reach
- With no permissionless farming
- No leaderboards
- No low-effort incentive loops
Most importantly, it expands beyond crypto:
→ Finance
→ AI
→ Web2 brands
→ Multi-platform distribution (not just X)
This is a shift from token-incentivized posting to creator infrastructure.
That said, one constraint matters:
Whether this model scales depends on real ROI, not narratives. Brands pay for outcomes — not engagement theater.
And Yes — $KAITO Still Matters
Kaito has confirmed the KAITO token is not being abandoned, though details of its future role have not yet been made public.
That matters.
Projects don’t sunset an entire incentive system unless the token is being re-aligned to the next phase, not discarded. The open question isn’t if KAITO has a role — it’s what kind of role fits a post-InfoFi world.
$COOKIE Wasn’t an Exception — It Was Confirmation
The sell-off in $COOKIE wasn’t random contagion. It was validation.
Multiple InfoFi tokens moved together because they shared:
- The same incentive logic
- The same distribution dependency
- The same fragility
This confirms the core takeaway:
👉 Markets are repricing the InfoFi model itself.
This Isn’t a Patch. It’s a Reset.
Crypto narratives flip fast.
Builders adapt faster.
Markets usually react last.
The real question now isn’t whether InfoFi is “dead.”
It’s whether the market has already priced in what replaces it — or whether it’s still trading tokens based on a structure that no longer exists.
And that leads to the uncomfortable follow-up:
If $KAITO was first, and $COOKIE followed…
which InfoFi token is next?
This kind of mispricing isn’t unique to InfoFi. It’s part of a broader shift in how crypto markets now move — where narratives, liquidity, and infrastructure matter more than fixed timelines. We’ve already seen this play out at the macro level, as Bitcoin market cycles are changing and the traditional four-year model no longer tells the full story, with capital rotating earlier toward fundamentals while headlines lag behind reality.
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