Kaito Airdrop Draws Mixed Reactions

Kaito, a data and mindshare toolset that leverages artificial intelligence (AI), released its token today following its Yaps farming campaign that began in December. While some users are fuming over the distribution system, others are satisfied with the zero-cost airdrop farm.

The KAITO token launched with 24% of the token supply in circulation, and is trading at a $400 million market capitalization, or a $1.7 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV).

The tokenomics include a 10% initial airdrop to Yap farmers and Kaito NFT holders, while 25% is allocated to core contributors, 8.3% to early investors, and 32.2% to ecosystem growth.

Yap Farming

The token generation event has been the talk of Crypto Twitter over the past couple of weeks, partially because farmers were incentivized to talk about KAITO and its airdrop farming mechanism called Yaps.

Yaps proved controversial as the mechanism heavily favored users with large social followings, particularly those that drew engagement or conversation related to Kaito and its product.

The airdrop and Yap distributions were largely based on Kaito AI’s interpretation of individual users and accounted for “those who are most aligned with the Kaito community and most likely to actively participate in our InfoFi roadmap over the long term” - meaning those who displayed interest, whether genuine or fake, in the long term prospects of Kaito may have received larger token allocations.

The variable distribution system took many by surprise, and one trader and farmer known as Cnig expressed frustration and said, “I'm out here tweeting like my life depends on it for these stupid yaps.. farmed 350 ish and got 1.1k $KAITO which is like the same as what my friends got with 60 yaps. THEY NERFED MY ASS”

Kaito Genesis NFTs

The NFT drop also ruffled feathers during its launch, with some users claiming that the whitelist mechanism was intentionally kept quiet to benefit insiders.

Despite some early hiccups, the Kaito NFTs surged as high as 12 ETH prior to the token snapshot, 120x from the 0.1 ETH mint price. Post-snapshot, the Kaito NFTs dropped by 67% to 4 ETH and fell another 60% today to 1.7 ETH now that the token has been distributed.

One of the top Yap farmers, IcoBeast, said, “Hope it goes higher for the stakers/full holders. Overall, I don't love the tokenomics because initial airdrop to community felt lower than what I thought was being telegraphed, and ~35% to team/foundation feels high.”

Kaito raised just over $10 million across two investment rounds in 2022 and 2023, led by Dragonfly and Sequoia Capital.