Seen a lot of debates over the last few days over the value of attention, and how important (or unimportant) it is, both in crypto and beyond.

here are my takes on it and how Kaito fits into it:

Does attention drive value?

“First time founders are obsessed with product. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution.” - @justinkan

for a consumer product in today’s world, distribution is often closely associated with attention - in the form of screentime or share of voice.

attention, far outside of just crypto, is crucial.

far too many times a decent product can have way less adoption than a mediocre product simply because of distribution

within crypto, even the best products, when supercharged with attention, can accelerate its growth - we’ve seen hyperliquid’s huge market share acceleration since TGE

Now, if attention drives value, does it drive valuation?

1/ for non-meme projects, my framework is an indirect relationship in user adoption and investor education:

• attention → user adoption → stronger fundamental metrics → potential liquid purchase

• attention → investor education → potential liquid purchase

this is effectively how tradfi public companies work:

• you have a marketing dept focused on top of the funnel → user conversion

• you have an IR dept focused on investor education

in crypto, there are two reasons why attention is even more important/valuable:

• your users are often times also your token holders, so you are converting both at the same time

• there’s an attention premium for speculative demand

2/ when it comes to memecoin valuation, the first funnel breaks down, and thus i tend to think of memecoin valuation framework as simply

attention x narrative (fundamental x multiple)

• memes within the same attention defer in valuation given different narratives.

• within the same narrative, memes compete on attention.

I wouldn’t go into any specific launches, but put simply, attention is important, but not all attention is worth the same.

The role of attention-building for pre-tge and post-tge projects

1/ pre-tge:

given typically how large the incentives are at TGE, the unit value of attention is significant for:

• converting as many airdrop recipients to users through distributed brand awareness & education

• telling the investment case to as many potential investors as possible

2/ post-tge:

• attention building is most valuable for new product launches and new investment cases

• but most brands also adopt an approach of ongoing attention building - crucial for both user acquisition/retention as well as capital markets - just like a typical publicly listed company would do

Relating to the value of attention to Kaito

some people feel yaps may be incentivizing loud / low quality content

though, as evident from the real-time yaps ranking, yaps has always been heavily skewed towards quality discussions

as an example, over the last 24h, the top 3 yaps gainers are

• @udiWertheimer triggers significant discussions on Musk’s comment on encryption
• @EliBenSasson) critiques Bitcoin’s inability to implement OP_CAT
• @fiddybps1 critiques Jeff.hl’s claim that transparent trading on Hyperliquid benefits large traders

note this is different from each yapper leaderboard, where project teams have the control over what type of discussions they want to reward, including insightfulness, sentiment/alignment, and others.

a nuance that needs to be realized when it comes to attention is who it’s coming from, and in what form.

for some projects, they decide their focus is on creating as much awareness as possible, as Loudio decided - meaning the algorithm they choose to go with is less focused on quality and insightfulness.

contrastingly, other projects may decide that concentrated, insightful discussions is what they want to foster, maybe around specific products as we’ve seen from projects like Infinex.

the role of Kaito in both of these is to tailor to their focus, and by doing this, it also benefits users in a sense of education and brand feel - you are able to get a sense for the project by the content that they are interested in incentivising/recognizing.

Converting attention through Kaito

Kaito isn’t all about attention formation. beyond Yaps, we have:

from attention formation to user conversion - Kaito Earn

from attention formation to capital formation - Capital Launchpad

from attention formation to market formation - stay tuned

starting from May, with the launch of Kaito Earn, Kaito is already heavily leaning into the user conversion side, leveraging our high quality and highly engaged user base.

last week we announced that Kaito activated 33699 activated agents, ~1/3 of activity on Newton. these are agents with actual dollar deployed for recurring buys for BTC, KAITO etc, with actual fees generated.

similarly we have programmes with infinex and others.

soon, with the launch of capital launchpad, Kaito will be bridging the gap of using AI analytics for capital formation, optimizing for long-term alignment, value-add, and coverage

vertically, kaito is expanding outside of X to help further breakdown the echo chamber - stay tuned for more to come

Conclusion

in an attention economy, attention is inherently valuable

the nuanced take is the value of attention depends on the retention, the consensus, the underlying subject (ie product), the quality, and many other factors.

the world is only going in one direction -

influencers that dominate attention will dominate monetization

tech platforms that dominate screentime will dominate distribution and user generated data

that’s the reason why brands (and founders) nowadays need social presence.

rather than fighting this global trend, our industry has the ability to build a network that’s fairer and more empowering for everyone

and that’s my vision for InfoFi -

to empower monetization for the masses by unlocking three major pillars:

• sovereign data ownership and monetization
• market forces as the closest source of truth
• information markets as the most democratized way to express market views

let’s keep pushing boundaries.

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