InfoFi is Eating Web3
The new gold rush isn’t code. It’s context.
In 2025, the most valuable asset in Web3 isn't a token. It's signal.
(Cue theme music) InfoFi, that's Information Finance for the uninitiated, a layer in the digital economy where your hot takes and insights aren't just content, they've become tradable assets. Welcome to the attention casino, folks.
The Vision: Markets That Yield Truth
This InfoFi thing blew up after Vitalik dropped his November 2024 essay "From prediction markets to info finance" where he basically said:
"Start from a fact you want to know, and design a market to optimally elicit that information."
What started as crypto-nerds playing "guess the ETH price" has mutated into an entire economic sector. Now it's reshaping how we produce, curate, and monetize literally everything, from sh!tcoin rumors to global macro trends.
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The old web was simple: your attention was the product. The new web? It's brutal:
- Tweets aren't just hot air, they're tokens.
- Your likes are paying someone's rent.
- That retweet just funded someone's seed round.
InfoFi doesn't just want you to scroll mindlessly, it wants you to create signal and get paid for it. The dopamine hits now come with dollar signs attached.
From Betting on Events to Betting on Buzz
Prediction markets like Augur and Polymarket kicked this whole thing off. They used price discovery to extract truth, about elections, inflation numbers, or that L2 upgrade everyone's hyped about.
But InfoFi? It's playing a different game entirely.
It doesn't just want you to predict, it pays you to propagate, curate, and create the damn signal itself.
The paradigm shift: attention literally becomes liquidity.
- Kaito dropped "Yapper leaderboards" scoring tweets on engagement. Top the chart? Congrats, here's your airdrop.
- Cookie.fun built a full-stack data and insights API plus "Snaps," a tool that pays creators in real time (because waiting is so Web2).
- Loud straight-up invented the "Initial Attention Offering", distributing tokens based on hype and shares, not some fantasy roadmap.
This isn't your cute Web2 gamification; it's ruthless game theory applied to content. Signal + traction = value. The louder, cleaner, or earlier your signal, the more you bank.
Why Now: Perfect Storm of AI, Social, and Misallocated Growth Spend
Three forces collided to make InfoFi explode:
- AI-flooded signal pools: GPTs spew endless text. Feeds drown in spam. So Kaito and Cookie are deploying AI‐powered filters, then paying the humans smart enough to break through them.
- Attention scattered everywhere: Forget Twitter/X monopoly. InfoFi spans Farcaster, Lens, Warpcast, Discord armies, and meme factories. Your platform doesn't matter, your audience and impact do.
- Growth hack fatigue: Web3 projects burned millions on useless impressions. InfoFi flips the script with proof‑of‑impact: only paying for real engagement that's verified on-chain.
InfoFi isn't some random side quest in the Web3 journey, it's the inevitable next phase. Attention is the new capital, and signal is the new seed round.
The Emerging Stack of InfoFi Infrastructure
To grasp InfoFi, visualize its stack:
- Layer Description Sentiment Layer Pulls, scores, ranks content (Kaito, Ethos trust scores)
- Data Layer Feeds token flows, social metrics, API access (Cookie, Arkham)
- Campaign Layer Airdrops, bounty boards, reward auctions (Cookie Snaps, Loud IAO)
- Market Layer Futures on hype, prediction & influence derivatives (Noise)
- Governance Layer Identity proofs, anti‑sybil, reputation checks (Ethos SBTs, reputation NFTs)
That’s the InfoFi stack, a new architecture of attention‑driven systems where every layer can be monetized, modular, and programmable.
Case Studies: Winners, Whales & Wildcards
- KaitoFounded 2022, pivoted from AI‑curated crypto search to a social engagement marketplace. Metrics:
- $33M annualized revenue by mid‑2025
- $KAITO token ~ $500M market cap→ Leadership in content curation, but post‑airdrop token sell‑pressure dented hype.
- Cookie.funFocus: data and infrastructure rather than social. Offers:
- 7+ TB live feeds daily
- 475K unique users
- Snaps campaign tool→ Data architects beating social cowboys.
- Loud ($LOUD)The attention economy experiment: weekly rewards from trading fees allocated by leaderboard.→ Hype machine with no actual utility — fearless and provocative.
- Arkham Intel ExchangeUsers trade on‑chain intelligence — think “dox‑for‑dividends”→ Controversially monetizing information that used to be free.
- NoiseSell/buy the future popularity of projects or people.→ Attention derivatives meet prediction markets.
- EthosVerifiable contributor identity and trust scores.→ The trust layer needed to prevent InfoFi from collapsing into spam and impersonation.
Plus smaller players like Xeet (audio/microcasts), Backroom (research‑focused), X‑ME (social missions) — each building niche attention primitives.
At Cracked Labs, we’re continuing to track, support, and work with early‑stage teams building across the InfoFi stack. We are announcing shortly that we have partnered with Supafund and Spartan Capital to launch and develop our own InfoFi play, to ensure founders with real signal, not just amplification, get the attention they deserve. Supafund.xyz will be publicly available soon.
The Pushback: Spam, Sybils, & Paid Endorsements
When attention has a price, problems follow:
- 📉 Spam cyclone: point‑farming yields reams of low‑quality content.
- 💸 Pay‑to‑shill: are you hyping because you believe in it… or because there’s profit?
- 🪳 Sybil hygiene: bots, sockpuppets, AI spin farms.
Both Cookie and Kaito are deploying AI filters, human moderation, and SBT-based identity systems to push back against gaming.
But it’s a constant arms race.
The Road to Real InfoFi: Signals that Matter
Long-term, InfoFi thrives where signal is valuable, scarce, and actionable:
- Governance decision markets: Will DAO X pass proposal Y?
- Research bounty boards: Reward deep crypto or security analysis.
- Narrative futures: Bet on topic wave‑length before meme coin explodes.
- Reputation-backed campaigns: Invest in creators with proven history.
The value in InfoFi isn’t in noise, it’s in trusted signal, monetized fairly and transparently.
What’s Next?
The future battleground includes:
- Proof-of-impact premiums: Back content before it goes viral.
- Stake-to-signal systems: Put skin in the game on your own take.
- Cross-protocol InfoFi meshes: Seamless value flows across Lens, Farcaster, Discord, and token channels.
- Professionalized protocols: InfoFi infrastructure with SLAs, interface stability, revenue share.
This ecosystem is bigger than any single app or token. It’s the new layer bridging culture and capital, and if you build on it, you can bootstrap an audience, community, and utility, all at once.
🚨 Ecosystem Headlines
1. Yap‑to‑Earn Takes Over Crypto Twitter
Blockworks breaks down how Kaito’s “Yaps” leaderboard is transforming Crypto Twitter into a pay-for-quality broadcast network—rewarding top insight posters like Vitalik and CZ, while battling gaming attempts and engendering real content competition . https://blockworks.co/news/kaito-yap-to-earn-takeover
2. Snap-to-Earn: Cookie’s Loyalty Engine
Bankless dives into Cookie.fun’s “Snaps” creator network, spotlighting how real‑time scoring, leaderboards, and $COOKIE rewards are rewriting attention economics—and why it matters for every Web3 growth play .
https://www.bankless.com/cookies-infofi-debut
3. InfoFi Game Theory: $LOUD IAO Raises 400 SOL
PANews & Bitget explain Loud’s first-of-its-kind Initial Attention Offering: 400 SOL (~$70K), aggressive two-phase distribution, and control over nearly 70 % of tracked attention—pure memetic economics in action . https://www.panewslab.com/en/articles/z98500x1
4. Arkham’s Intel Exchange: Paying for On‑Chain Truth
CoinBureau’s latest review explores Arkham Intelligence’s Intel Exchange—where users buy and sell verified on‑chain insights, from deanonymization to flow analysis, making intelligence a tradable asset .
https://coinbureau.com/review/arkham-intelligence-review/ 
🛠 Builder’s Corner
- Noise – Influence Derivatives Market
Bet on memecoin or narrative virality before tokens launch
→ https://noise.market
- Cookie Deep Research Dashboards
Merge on‑chain metrics + social sentiment + token velocity
→ https://cookie.fun/research
- Farcaster Frames SDK
Build InfoFi mini‑apps within Farcaster ecosystem
→ https://docs.farcaster.xyz/frames