Are we trapped in an information cocoon by InfoFi? No, we have always been in an information cocoon

It’s not InfoFi that’s trending, it’s Web3. It’s always been like this

Recently, I saw many people discussing a topic: Will InfoFi create an "information cocoon"? This question made me think about it for a long time and I also looked through many cases. The conclusion is: this is not a problem of InfoFi, but a structural result of content dissemination itself. InfoFi just makes this matter "look more obvious".

Let’s take a step back and first understand what role InfoFi plays in the entire narrative chain.

From the perspective of the project side, InfoFi is an accelerator. The purpose is to make the project "look hot" and let users know that "someone is talking about this project", thereby further promoting interaction or conversion. Therefore, the project side will allocate a budget to match the InfoFi activities, and at the same time look for marketing agencies, especially those that can mobilize big KOLs.

The emergence of information cocoons often does not start from the bottom users, but from the top content. Big KOLs take advertisements and write copy, and the downstream small KOLs will also post if they think the project is popular; plus the Twitter algorithm will recommend similar content based on interactions, and as a result, the user's timeline is filled with different people's opinions on the same project, but they all look the same.

So as a user, you will think: "Why is the whole world talking about Project X? Is InfoFi trapping us in an information loop of a project?"

But think about it from another perspective. In the era without InfoFi, KOLs still took turns to promote, write articles, and publish hard ads. It’s just that people didn’t make this content delivery mechanism “explicit” at that time. InfoFi gave this matter a platform and structure, which made the law of communication clearer.

So why do we say that InfoFi amplifies the existing information bias mechanism?

The reason is simple: InfoFi improves the efficiency of information organization and dissemination, but this efficiency is accelerated based on the original "attention structure" rather than subverted.

The project party will originally invest the budget in big KOLs, and this part of the content will be launched online first; the InfoFi mechanism mobilizes mid- and tail-end creators to concentrate on outputting content in a short period of time, and Twitter's recommendation algorithm can more easily identify that "there is a topic that is currently popular", so it continues to recommend similar content to form a closed loop.

Furthermore, the sources of content are relatively concentrated, and everyone’s writing goals are similar: to participate, score, and gain exposure, rather than to deeply analyze the project from different angles. So the content you see may look different, but it is actually similar, and you will gradually feel like you are always trapped in a project narrative.

So InfoFi did not create information bias, but it did amplify the existing communication structure bias. It turned the information flow that used to be distributed in points and fermented slowly into a concentrated burst of traffic push with wide coverage.

Let's take a closer look at where everyone's anxiety comes from. Some people think it's because the content is highly repetitive.

This does exist, but content duplication is not unique to InfoFi. Ultimately, it is determined by the budget structure of the project party. The budget is heavily invested in big KOLs, and the big KOLs' writing naturally affects the algorithm recommendation, and the middle and tail are more likely to follow suit, so readers will naturally see the voice of "the same project".

But can you really name 10 pre-TGE projects in Kaito events? Most people can’t. Because in fact, the entire market’s attention is only focused on those few projects with big volume and budget.

Some people think that it is because of the low quality of content and the serious homogeneity of AI. Many people think that InfoFi encourages scoring, spamming, and AI-generated "fast food content". But in fact, the scores of AI spamming content are generally low. InfoFi's scoring model itself has an adversarial mechanism. It is difficult for content that is too mechanical and has no discernible features to get high scores.

To get a truly high-weighted score, it still depends on your narrative structure, the quality of your points, and engagement data.

Some people also say that the InfoFi event was full of "hard advertising flavor" as soon as it went online.

This is the most intuitive emotional point for users: when you see a project launched on InfoFi, and a bunch of people suddenly post similar content on social platforms, you will naturally resist instinctively, thinking "this is another advertisement." This is just like the early advertisers on Xiaohongshu flocking to KOC for promotion. As long as users can recognize that "you are advertising," they will automatically become immune.

How to solve it? Actually, we can start from two aspects: > Weaken the sense of ceremony of "project launch", for example, there is no need to list it as a "new task" or "promotion". For example, cancel the "listing" process, or directly provide a dashboard for all projects.

> Introducing a self-service delivery mechanism, the project party directly airdrops through the data dashboard provided by InfoFi. In this way, people will not feel that this is an "official event", but more like the natural emergence of content.

Consider this:

> If you are a newly started project, you can also track community interaction data yourself and let the outside world see that "someone is talking about you", even if no one knows whether you have a budget.

> If you are an old project, you can continue to attract attention through the data page. The focus will gradually change from "Is it a hot topic on InfoFi" to "Is the project community alive and well?"

But this mechanism also has an important premise: The project owner should not say in advance "We will look at the board to send airdrops"! Once it is announced in advance that "our airdrops will refer to the InfoFi board rankings", users will rush to the top, interact, and engage in pseudo-engagement, and the quality of the entire content will be lowered. In the end, the board will become another "ranking game". A more ideal operation is that the project owner quietly issues airdrops after TGE to reward users who have naturally interacted in the past, so that everyone realizes that "it turns out that writing posts, forwarding, and liking in the early days are useful", rather than "rushing to the top to get rewards."

When this mechanism becomes more and more mature, there will be dozens or even hundreds of projects in the market working on it quietly, and the bulletin board will become part of Web3 content. At that time, users will begin to have an expectation: "I don't know who will send an airdrop, but I always feel that it might be useful to write it." This is the best state of the content ecosystem - participation is not for rewards, but because you are really interested. And the reward is a bonus when you look back.

Just like many people now write articles and mention Sidesick. Maybe even after Kaito airdrop, people will still write about it because they think it is fun, easy to talk about, and informative. So InfoFi makes the existing communication structure more transparent and amplified.

What needs to be solved is "how to make the communication structure healthier". Whether it is by raising the participation threshold, optimizing the incentive design, or pushing the project party to guide the airdrop expectations more naturally, the direction is to make "content meaningful" rather than just "content quantity". If this step is achieved, InfoFi will not only be a traffic tool, but also an important underlying infrastructure of the entire Web3 content system.