been at Abu Dhabi Finance Week and catching up on some of the views around InfoFi

as always, appreciate all the observations and suggestions - the public discourse and feedback is how we learn and improve

below are some of my latest thoughts, with perspective from also meeting with top web2 brands recently

• globally, distribution is increasingly decentralized - shifting from pay-for-platform to pay-for-creators, with a particular focus on user-creator overlap. Whop invented clipping-to-earn and SideShift is powering UGC content creation - both pure web2 US platforms, with a strong foothold on US campuses, and collectively powering billion dollar+ volumes annually. so, there is a mega trend
  
  
• the rise of AI has reduced the marginal cost of content to basically 0. all social media platforms are now ramping up anti-bot mechanism - can see AI ran content across all platforms, most notably LinkedIn, X and YouTube. Even on TikTok though which overall does a decent job, the comments section is flooded with slop, often simply summarizing the original video clip. so, there are obviously challenges
  
  
• marketing in crypto remains highly inefficient. before, it ran mainly on agency-KOL marketing. today it’s a hybrid - sometimes a dual track. the birth of InfoFi has unequivocally provided so many average user-creators their foothold into the space and an opportunity to get exposure while learning/using/sharing about the protocol.
  
  when I was in Korea earlier this year (Kaito’s no 1 market actually), I was surprised there were so many part-time professional workers (lawyers, bankers etc) using Kaito as their side hustle, as their way of learning about crypto and connecting with like-minded friends.
  
  hence why, since a few months ago, we introduced onchain multipliers, rewarding not just content creations, but also onchain usage of the protocols, as a shift towards a user-evangelist model. today we are working closely with many of the innovative apps in the space to bring their apps to users globally.
  
  what I think isn’t working well, compared with our web2 counterparts - I do think content creation needs a minimum threshold on either social influence or onchain usage. in web2 this was done through vetting and interviews. in web3, perhaps because of the ethos of being full permissionless, some of the teams opt for no threshold at all.
  
  going forward, we will work towards a minimum level of reputation or onchain usage to qualify. in fact, uniquely in web3, we actually have a ton of data, including at the wallet level. one metric that we will soon introduce is called “follower net worth” - frankly it’s something that’s impossible to fake.
  
  looking around, it is clear that Kaito today has the most strict anti-bot mechanism, and we encourage other platforms to be equally strict:
  
• replies don’t count
  
• reputation threshold for gating
  
• strict nerfs on engagement farming and group farming
  
• weekly cap on contributing tweets to disincentivize volume
  and many more
  
  we already open-sourced our reputation protocol - anyone is able to freely integrate.
  
  lastly, I do want to say that in this global shift towards UGC content and the mass proliferation of AI content, there is a truly unique opportunity for crypto.
  
  as Balaji said - “AI makes everything fake, and crypto makes it real again”
  
  truth is with wallet provenance, it provides the best way to tell the holistic profile of a particular account. In fact, today we know way better than X in filtering out bots for the exact same reason.
  
  I believe there’s an opportunity for crypto to play the role of telling what’s real vs fake on global social media
  
  at the end of the day, if decentralized social isn’t the answer, maybe it’s crypto doing what crypto does the best - provenance - in the inevitable future of the world of social media AI
  
  onwards