coindesk.com
Crypto analytics platform Kaito said it will sunset its Yaps product and incentivized leaderboards, marking a strategic shift after X moved to ban applications that reward users for posting on the social media platform. The $KAITO token fell around 17% on the news.
The announcement came shortly after X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, said the company had revised its policies to prohibit apps that financially incentivize posting, citing a surge in “AI slop & reply spam.” Bier said programmatic access had already been revoked from affected apps, and that terminated developers could explore migrating to platforms like Threads and Bluesky.
The fallout was immediate. According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the Kaito Yapper community on X, which had roughly 157,000 members, was banned following the policy change.
Yaps was essentially a product where users could earn rewards for tweeting about brands or projects, although it led to a rise AI-generated content despite the movement attracting hundreds of thousands of users with a large following in Korea. It was part of an industry labeled InfoFi, for Information Finance, in which users are rewarded for generating information and insights.
Kaito founder Yu Hu said the decision followed discussions with X and acknowledged that fully permissionless, incentive-driven distribution models are “no longer viable” under current platform constraints.
Kaito will replace Yaps with “Kaito Studio,” a more traditional, tier-based creator marketing platform focused on selective brand–creator partnerships, analytics, and cross-platform distribution beyond X, including YouTube and TikTok.
Kaito said the transition will not affect its other products, including Kaito Pro, API, Launchpad, or its upcoming Markets product, and that $KAITO will continue to play a role in the new Studio model, with details to be announced.