For the longest time, I didn’t view pump.fun in any different way than how I thought about most of the meme ecosystem. It was just a new interesting way to bootstrap liquidity for memetics, but as it went on to become the biggest onchain revenue and crime avenue, my thoughts remained mixed and convoluted.

Kaito came to ct late last year, I had seen their website before but the ux was clunky and unimpressive so I never gave a second thought but kaito was bigger than a twitter engagement dashboard, it introduced a new incentive structure into the semi monetised twitter where largely the value had remained in closed KOL deals. CT wrote threads and airdrop guides and shilled their bags. There were also Kol deals from big accounts to promote specific projects, but that was it. There were bad parts about ct, but they were largely isolated, Kaito came and democratised the financial incentives on Twitter, like when layerzero launched a paid bridge for sepolia.

https://x.com/gregthegreek/status/1628062799971897345

It was sharply criticised since testnet tokens were not supposed to have monetary value, creating a market for them introduced the wrong incentives in the ecosystem while a big argument in favour was it actually allowed interested parties to obtain sepoliaETH a lot easier.

Kaito's model was simple: users earn yaps for tweeting about specific content ie new projects or about their campaigns, and projects could incentivize users through this system. However, as ct went through cycles, it lost its charm and transformed into what Cobie called a "pigeon farm."

"The desperation, lack of relevance or invitation, and generally low quality and futility of the perpetual attempts... just like a pigeon trying to get your food."

Now everyone can tweet and shill projects for the direct or future promise of monetary incentives, the more you tweet more likely it is to get you higher on the leaderboard, no matter what quality you tweet. Yaps are the only parameter. Kaito and pumpfun allowed a bigger part of the ct to become pigeons since thats what their incentive was -> either a pump on their low mcap shitcoin they launched while you were refreshing twitter or the yap feed they will be on for a pre tge project to get airdrop allocation.

Infinex announced one of these 'yap to earn' campaigns with incentives starting from May 15th. This is a rough graph showing how that led to a sharp increase in the number of yaps.

This might be a good enough metric, but paying 6-7 fig in rewards for twitter mentions probably doesnt feel like the most productive decision.

One of the more interesting things that happened while I was writing was the launch of another project called Loudio, also based on “yaps.” Loudio’s website read “an experiment that explores perpetual incentives for social engagement. The core idea: what happens when you reward people for talking about a coin, forever?”

It was a perfect case study in how unreliable and easily manipulated ct is. The ecosystem, increasingly PvP and attention-driven, can be swayed overnight by a new shiny narrative. What was once signal quickly becomes noise as the incentives shift. More than an experiment, it was a mirror reflecting how cheap attention has become and how quickly the entire conversation can be redirected by clever incentive design which is basically free money.

The core argument remains unchanged: crypto itself isn't inherently bad. It's a credibly neutral technology → one that can just as easily be used to hedge against inflation as it can be to buy drugs. The same logic somewhat applies to platforms like Pump.fun and Kaito. While they are for-profit companies, they were created to fill real market gaps, as any rational actor would do. What they evolved into may differ from their original intent, but that doesn't make their existence inherently negative. The democratization of coin launches or tracking Twitter contributions isn't inherently bad; the problem lies in how these tools fuel a short-term mindset and create bad incentives for most crypto participants.

I think this trend will only intensify as crypto Twitter becomes increasingly PvP, with diminishing returns and a growing hunger for the next 100x or major airdrop. Every time a new shiny object hits the scene whether it’s Blast, Friend.tech, Farcaster, Pump.fun, or Believe.app the cycle of apes aping continues for the slightest of dopamine hits.

Monkey business pays well in Ape Season, when even the lowest IQ can make the highest percent gains. Gamified shitcoins and anonymous yield farms are good food for the modern trader who has given in to his primal instincts.

This is one of my favourite quotes, capturing the timeless crypto twitter in APE TAX by rekt.news .

These just a bunch of convoluted thoughts I have been pondering over a while, I do not claim any moral high ground but just sharing my opinions.
Always open to chat and share ideas & learn from everyone, feel free to hit me up on twitter @Madhav_goyal_.