They once said, “Data is the new oil.” Then, “Signal is the new gold.”. But what happens when signal gets corrupted by noise? In the previous chapter, we saw how attention = capital. Platforms like Pump.fun and Virtuals challenged the VC model by raising funds without generating real signal. But attention is like energy, when focused, it creates value. When left unchecked? It explodes. We call them Funnels Turned Weapons.

Kaito: Once a Pure Signal

During the noisiest days of Pump.fun, Kaito barely made a sound. But when the wave of “AI agents” hit, it seized its moment. Originally accessible only to users with 50-100 “smart followers,” it later opened to everyone though earning rewards still requires a minimum follower count (last checked, it was 10). In the community, creating content for Kaito was called “yapping”. And it worked: Kaito linked its hype engine directly to its own token launch and nailed it.

Kaito’s pitch was radical: measure social influence with mindshare points. At first, the difference between noise and impact was clear. Projects received heatmaps showing who generated attention. But it didn’t take long before “getting listed” became a luxury status symbol. Word on Twitter? Listing costs reached $200K+.

Still, appearing on Kaito became a “quality signal.”. Yet behind the scenes, bots, fake accounts and farmed interactions began to stress the system. What started as a signal engine slowly became nothing more than a badge of approval for manipulative projects.

Today, Kaito Pro costs $1,099/month, branding itself as “Web3’s Bloomberg Terminal”. But there’s a problem: Noise is bypassing the filters.

Filter or Noise Machine?

Every signal system can be manipulated. Kaito was no exception. As its “trust badge” grew more valuable, people wanted to buy their way in. Bots, fake engagement and synthetic content started to distort the mindshare algorithm.

Eventually, the system was designed to filter spam, but became spam itself.

Cookie: People's Terminal or New Weapon?

Then Cookie appeared with a clear slogan: “Signal for the community.”. Open source, free to use, clean UI. It positioned itself as the anti-Kaito. But is free signal more democratic or just easier to manipulate?

Cookie had an impressive foundation: Over 7TB of data, interaction mapping across 20+ chains and a DataSwarm analyzed by 18+ AI agents. Its tools (Agent Cookie and the DeFAI Terminal) blended on-chain and social data into insights. But power without transparency breeds distrust. Cookie's closed scoring algorithm drew criticism. Some projects allegedly farmed posts to boost their scores. And so, Cookie -too- was accused of enabling fake signals.

The game had changed: Noise was being manufactured to mimic signal.

The New Loop: From Noise to Signal, Then Back to Noise

Here’s how it works: You’ve got an idea. Maybe even a basic MVP. But no one knows you.

Step 1: Make noise. Hire a few “KOL Managers” from X (Twitter). Pay $5K–$10K for influencer marketing packs. If you’ve got a bigger budget, go all-in.

Step 2: Craft your narrative. Use lore and social engineering to guide the attention funnel. A month in, you apply to Kaito. Pay the $200K listing fee. Suddenly, CT (Crypto Twitter) starts yapping about you on schedule. This builds signal or at least, the illusion of it.

More attention = more signal. But as the system floods, signal degrades. Then comes the token launch. Liquidity flows in. You deliver or don’t. Either way, noise turns into signal. And just like that, the signal economy is captured before it can even be born.

Signal Is the New Asset Class - But It’s Farmable

Hype used to be built by launching tokens and rewarding real contribution through airdrops. Now, the next level of hype is signal farming. Mindshare scores. Cookie ratings. Leaderboard rankings. They’ve become new asset classes. They’re not tokens but maybe they’re more dangerous. Because people believe they’re real. And they make investment decisions based on signal-shaped noise. Actual contribution? It gets harder to detect every day.

The Escape? On-Chain Mindshare

The only shield against off-chain manipulation is on-chain transparency. Who contributed? When? To what? Which interactions were real? Which were farmed? What if the contribution itself could be written on-chain, just like tokens? That’s the only way to reclaim the value of the missing signal.

Next: When Noise Implodes

But what happens when the noise implodes on itself? Some projects create so much hype -so loudly- that the attention funnel collapses inward. Likes drop. Engagement slows. The community falls silent. Then only echoes remain. And when those die out too... Who’s left standing? All of them in the next one: Attention Economy - Part 3: Be Louder, More!

See you next Sunday.

They once said, “Data is the new oil.” Then, “Signal is the new gold.”. But what happens when signal gets corrupted by noise? In the previous chapter, we saw how attention = capital. Platforms like Pump.fun and Virtuals challenged the VC model by raising funds without generating real signal. But attention is like energy, when focused, it creates value. When left unchecked? It explodes. We call them Funnels Turned Weapons.

Kaito: Once a Pure Signal

During the noisiest days of Pump.fun, Kaito barely made a sound. But when the wave of “AI agents” hit, it seized its moment. Originally accessible only to users with 50-100 “smart followers,” it later opened to everyone though earning rewards still requires a minimum follower count (last checked, it was 10). In the community, creating content for Kaito was called “yapping”. And it worked: Kaito linked its hype engine directly to its own token launch and nailed it.

Kaito’s pitch was radical: measure social influence with mindshare points. At first, the difference between noise and impact was clear. Projects received heatmaps showing who generated attention. But it didn’t take long before “getting listed” became a luxury status symbol. Word on Twitter? Listing costs reached $200K+.

Still, appearing on Kaito became a “quality signal.”. Yet behind the scenes, bots, fake accounts and farmed interactions began to stress the system. What started as a signal engine slowly became nothing more than a badge of approval for manipulative projects.

Today, Kaito Pro costs $1,099/month, branding itself as “Web3’s Bloomberg Terminal”. But there’s a problem: Noise is bypassing the filters.

Filter or Noise Machine?

Every signal system can be manipulated. Kaito was no exception. As its “trust badge” grew more valuable, people wanted to buy their way in. Bots, fake engagement and synthetic content started to distort the mindshare algorithm.

Eventually, the system was designed to filter spam, but became spam itself.

Cookie: People's Terminal or New Weapon?

Then Cookie appeared with a clear slogan: “Signal for the community.”. Open source, free to use, clean UI. It positioned itself as the anti-Kaito. But is free signal more democratic or just easier to manipulate?

Cookie had an impressive foundation: Over 7TB of data, interaction mapping across 20+ chains and a DataSwarm analyzed by 18+ AI agents. Its tools (Agent Cookie and the DeFAI Terminal) blended on-chain and social data into insights. But power without transparency breeds distrust. Cookie's closed scoring algorithm drew criticism. Some projects allegedly farmed posts to boost their scores. And so, Cookie -too- was accused of enabling fake signals.

The game had changed: Noise was being manufactured to mimic signal.

The New Loop: From Noise to Signal, Then Back to Noise

Here’s how it works: You’ve got an idea. Maybe even a basic MVP. But no one knows you.

Step 1: Make noise. Hire a few “KOL Managers” from X (Twitter). Pay $5K–$10K for influencer marketing packs. If you’ve got a bigger budget, go all-in.

Step 2: Craft your narrative. Use lore and social engineering to guide the attention funnel. A month in, you apply to Kaito. Pay the $200K listing fee. Suddenly, CT (Crypto Twitter) starts yapping about you on schedule. This builds signal or at least, the illusion of it.

More attention = more signal. But as the system floods, signal degrades. Then comes the token launch. Liquidity flows in. You deliver or don’t. Either way, noise turns into signal. And just like that, the signal economy is captured before it can even be born.

Signal Is the New Asset Class - But It’s Farmable

Hype used to be built by launching tokens and rewarding real contribution through airdrops. Now, the next level of hype is signal farming. Mindshare scores. Cookie ratings. Leaderboard rankings. They’ve become new asset classes. They’re not tokens but maybe they’re more dangerous. Because people believe they’re real. And they make investment decisions based on signal-shaped noise. Actual contribution? It gets harder to detect every day.

The Escape? On-Chain Mindshare

The only shield against off-chain manipulation is on-chain transparency. Who contributed? When? To what? Which interactions were real? Which were farmed? What if the contribution itself could be written on-chain, just like tokens? That’s the only way to reclaim the value of the missing signal.

Next: When Noise Implodes

But what happens when the noise implodes on itself? Some projects create so much hype -so loudly- that the attention funnel collapses inward. Likes drop. Engagement slows. The community falls silent. Then only echoes remain. And when those die out too... Who’s left standing? All of them in the next one: Attention Economy - Part 3: Be Louder, More!

See you next Sunday.