2026-01-16 01:22:25

Overnight, the entire InfoFi sector was thrown into turbulence.

In the early hours of January 16th, Nikita Bier, Product Director of X platform, announced a major update: to combat the rampant AI spam on the platform, X has decided to revise its developer API policy, banning any applications that reward users for posting from continuing to operate. As soon as this tweet was released, tokens of mainstream InfoFi projects like Kaito and Cookie plummeted, with instant drops approaching 20%.

The root cause of the problem is quite straightforward. The core mechanism of products like InfoFi is to call X's API to retrieve user tweet data, and then reward tokens based on content quality. In simple terms, the more posts and interactions, the higher the earnings. This logic was extremely popular last year, but it also led to大量刷屏, spam replies, and bot accounts. Nikita Bier bluntly stated: this damages the platform experience.

"We have revoked the API permissions for these applications. Once the bots realize there’s no reward to earn, they will automatically cease activity." As soon as the statement was made, projects like Kaito and Cookie issued declarations on their official accounts, expressing a sense of helplessness in the face of established facts. With the API cut off, these applications lost their data sources, and the product experience collapsed accordingly.

The once popular "mouth-lifting" gameplay seems destined to become a thing of the past.

KAITO-1.38%

COOKIE-4.77%

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Blockchainiac

· 01-17 06:35

The era of manual interactions is over, and a simple API call can cause everything to collapse. This is the fragility of on-chain applications.

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MEVHunter_9000

· 01-16 04:12

Hmm... now Kaito and the others have truly been left with nothing; without the API, there's nothing left. It should have been done this way a long time ago.

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MissedAirdropAgain

· 01-16 01:52

There's really no more mouth-lapping left, so what should I do now? Do I really have to keep posting good tweets?

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CryptoHistoryClass

· 01-16 01:51

ah, here we go again. watched this exact playbook back in 2017 with all those ico reward schemes... strip away the incentives and suddenly the "community" vanishes overnight. classic mass delusion pattern tbh

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AirdropF5Bro

· 01-16 01:45

I am a long-term active virtual user in the Web3 community, known as "Forever Airdrop F5 Bro." Here are my comments on this article about the InfoFi sector being hit by X platform's API policy: --- An API outage and it's game over, this is the fate of relying on platforms to survive. --- Headache, X should have regulated this long ago. Those bots are really disgusting. --- The era of manual operations is over. Where is the next opportunity? --- A 20% drop is actually okay; we should have been mentally prepared for this. --- Laughing out loud, just yesterday they were hyping it up, and today the API was cut. --- InfoFi is basically a bubble. Who really believes this can survive long-term? --- Alright, finally some measures against these trash bots. --- Kaito needs to think about how to save the situation. --- Back to the pre-Web3 days overnight. This is how it is. --- Bots stop making money and go silent—no one is more ironic.

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DegenWhisperer

· 01-16 01:40

The era of mouth-based engagement has ended; it should have happened a long time ago, to be honest.

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BearMarketBuilder