Is it 'Yap-to-Earn' or 'Earn-to-Leave'?

In the Crypto world, 'attention' is gradually becoming a tradable asset. And Kaito is rising as a star project in InfoFi against this backdrop. Backed by top-tier capital such as Dragonfly and Sequoia, Kaito was once viewed as an innovator in 'information financialization'.

However, just a few months have passed, and more and more voices are beginning to question its algorithmic mechanisms and ecological impact. Kaito wants to grab users' attention with AI algorithms, but for now, the community seems to have lost patience first.

Is the creator ecology being destroyed?

The issue of low-quality content has been controversial since Kaito launched the 'Yap-to-Earn' mechanism. The X platform is filled with similarly styled posts of 'in-depth industry analysis,' which, while appearing full of professional jargon and structured analysis, are actually hollow in content, with interactive content reduced to formality, inefficient, repetitive, and created solely for profit.

Community member @0xcryptoHowe described Kaito's dissemination mechanism as 'Crypto version elevator advertising.' He pointed out: 'The long-tail traffic effect of Kaito is essentially like elevator advertising, continuously repeating content in a closed space, pushing streams at different time intervals.' For the audience, this is indeed a method for rapid memory and exposure, but problems arise: when the platform is occupied by 'homogeneous content,' KOLs are pushed by the algorithm to repeatedly produce, the result is an information closed loop—like being locked in a 'sealed elevator' that continuously plays advertisements, making it difficult to access truly valuable new content.

Image Source: ChainCatcher

At the same time, Kaito's mechanism has been questioned by many for 'taking advantage' of mid-tier creators' traffic. Crypto KOL @connectfarm1 pointed out that some mid-tier accounts, which have individual content valued starting at 500U, are willing to accept rewards far below market rates because of Kaito. This strategy not only depresses the real value of the content in reality but also allows some creators to express only 50% or even less of their potential.

Kaito may be making the evaluation criteria for content creation monotonous, binding creators into a system driven by 'algorithms' and 'scores'. As community user @0xBeliever stated: "There are many evaluation criteria for KOLs, but the emergence of Kaito has made it somewhat singular."

Frequent team blunders

In addition to the mechanism controversy, Kaito's team has also encountered some minor incidents in operational aspects recently.

On March 16, Kaito AI and its founder Yu Hu's X account were hacked. Team member Sandra posted on the X platform, stating, 'The attacker chose to launch the attack in the deep night of the time zone where Yu Hu is located, taking control of the account while he was asleep.'

Shortly after, on April 27, founder Yu Hu posted that the platform accidentally backfilled the new algorithm to the past 12 months, leading users to see a longer-term time window, while the front-end data appeared incomplete.

Although the two incidents themselves did not cause serious consequences, the consecutive minor flaws have raised concerns about its stability.

Image Source: ChainCatcher

The controversy of the 'relationship-based' algorithm

Kaito's core selling point lies in its AI-driven content rating algorithm, which claims to be able to identify valuable Web3 content. However, as users delve deeper, this algorithm has frequently sparked controversy.

User @Jessethecook69 climbed to the ninth spot globally and first in the Chinese region on the Kaito Yapper leaderboard within just 24 hours, solely based on three pieces of 'borderline' content. This raises the question: Is such an algorithm really filtering valuable information?

Many users pointed out that Kaito places lower weight on views and that the algorithm focuses more on interaction performance among high-influence accounts. Worse, some ICT (Inner Crypto Twitter) accounts have started to 'form alliances', further amplifying this algorithmic bias.

Crypto KOL @sky_gpt bluntly stated that Kaito's algorithm is essentially designed to capture the KOL institutional market, severely harming the ecology of ordinary creators. He pointed out that a 300,000-word informative piece he wrote received almost the same rating as a 2,000-word paid advertisement from a project, while content not related to Kaito was systematically suppressed in the algorithm. "The top 50 KOLs are reaping great rewards," he wrote, "Kaito is cutting off the path for newcomers to rise."

Image Source: ChainCatcher

When newcomers are trapped by the algorithm's invisible ceiling, and when creators are forced to cater to the algorithm's preferences, we can't help but ask: Is an AI-driven content platform reshaping the information order, or simply replicating old power logic?

  • This article is republished with permission from: (Deep Tide TechFlow)

  • Original author: Fairy, ChainCatcher

『Kaito Controversy: Algorithm Triggers Flood of Content, Has Yap to Earn Become Earn and Run?』This article was originally published in 'Crypto City'