Kaito, trap KOL in the algorithm

Author: Fairy, ChainCatcher

Edited by: TB, ChainCatcher

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

In the Crypto world, "attention" is gradually becoming an asset that can be priced. Kaito is the InfoFi star project that has risen in this context. Backed by top capitals such as Dragonfly and Sequoia, Kaito was once regarded as an innovator of "information financialization".

However, just a few months have passed, more and more voices have begun to question its algorithmic mechanism and ecological impact. Kaito wants to use AI algorithms to capture users' attention, but at the moment, the community seems to have lost patience first.

The creator ecology is destroyed?

Hydrological issues have been controversial since Kaito launched the "Yap-to-Earn" mechanism. The X platform is full of "industry in-depth analysis" posts with similar styles. On the surface, it is full of professional terms and structured analysis, but in fact the content is empty and interactive content is informal, inefficient, repetitive, and born to gain profits.

Community member @0xcryptoHowe once used the "Crypto version of elevator advertisement" to describe Kaito's communication mechanism. He pointed out: "Kaito's long-tail flow effect is essentially like an elevator advertisement. In a closed space, the content is constantly repeated and the flow is pushed in turn at different time periods." For the audience, this is indeed a method of quick memory and exposure, but the problem also follows: when the platform is occupied by "homogeneous content", KOLs are pushed and produced repeatedly by algorithms, and ultimately form a closed loop of information - like being locked in a "closed elevator" that never stops playing advertisements, it is difficult to access truly valuable new content.

At the same time, Kaito's mechanism has been questioned by many people for the traffic of the creators in "free travel". Encrypted KOL @connectfarm1 once pointed out that some mid-level accounts with a single content value of 500U are willing to accept returns far below the market price. In reality, this strategy not only lowers the true value of the content, but also allows some creators to only exert 50% or even lower expression.

Kaito may be turning the judging criteria for content creation into monotonous, tying creators into a system oriented towards “algorithms” and “scores”. As the community user @0xBeliever said: "There are many criteria for kol's judgment, but the appearance of kaito makes it a little single."

Team mistakes frequently

In addition to mechanism disputes, Kaito's team has also recently experienced some small episodes at the operational level.

On March 16, Kaito AI and its founder Yu Hu's X account were hacked. Team member Sandra posted on the X platform, saying, "The attacker chose to launch an attack late at night in the time zone where Yu Hu is located, and controlled the account while he was sleeping."

Immediately afterwards on April 27, founder Yu Hu posted a statement saying that the platform accidentally backfilled the new algorithm to the past 12 months, causing users to see a longer-term time window, and at the same time, the front-end data was incomplete.

Although the two incidents themselves did not cause serious consequences, the successive minor flaws also attracted everyone's attention to their stability.

Algorithm dispute about " relationship-focused "

Kaito's core selling point is its AI-driven content scoring algorithm that claims to identify valuable Web3 content. However, as users deepen their use, this algorithm has frequently caused controversy.

User @Jessethecook69 In just 24 hours, with just three "edge" content, it ranked ninth in the Kaito Yapper list and first in the Chinese region. This makes people wonder: Is such an algorithm really screening valuable information?

Many users pointed out that Kaito has a low weight on reading volume, and the algorithm focuses more on interactive performance between high-influence accounts. What’s bad is that some ICTs (Inner Crypto Twitter) have begun to “group”, further amplifying the tilt of this algorithm.

Encryption KOL @sky_gpt bluntly stated that Kaito's algorithm is essentially designed to seize the KOL institutional market and seriously damage the ecology of ordinary creators. He pointed out that a 300,000-yuan dry content he wrote was almost the same as a 2k advertisement post on a project that spent money to buy, while content related to Kaito was systematically suppressed in the algorithm. "The top 50 KOLs on the list are eating a lot," he wrote, "Kaito is cutting off the path to newcomers' rise."

When newcomers are trapped in the invisible ceiling of algorithms, and when creators are forced to cater to algorithm preferences, we can't help but ask: Is an AI-powered content platform reshaping the information order or copying the old power logic?