Crypto Twitter turns scrutiny on AI slop. engagement farming for rewards

Crypto investigator ZachXBT has asked social media platforms to take stronger action against promotions of inorganic AI projects, AI-generated content, and spam linked to information finance (InfoFi) projects. 

According to ZachXBT, certain accounts are incentivizing engagement farming and inorganic discussions to earn revenue from monetized creator programs. The blockchain sleuth made his stance on infoFI projects clear on X Thursday, when one account questioned his latest investigative thread. 

In that thread, ZachXBT revealed evidence connecting a suspect to the $28 million Bittensor hack in 2024 through several anime NFT wash trades allegedly tied to a former employee. His efforts reportedly earned him a whitehat bounty.

“What I publish is just the portion I can make public,” he jotted down, explaining that “certain other aspects are better to share with law enforcement.”

ZachXBT calls out InfoFI account for promoting AI slop

An infoFI account asked if he had handed his findings to authorities, as said, to which ZachXBT shared screenshots showing the verified username “Vlados” promoting several AI-driven engagement campaigns for tokens like Quack.

“Social media platforms really need to crack down on all of these inorganic AI slop/spam campaigns Inf0F1 projects incentivize,” he surmised, posting a screenshot of Wallchain trending on X.

Social media platforms really need to crack down on all of these inorganic AI slop/spam campaigns Inf0F1 projects incentivize. pic.twitter.com/ZNFInjBYgP

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 16, 2025

Ethereum developer Osrak commented on the situation, saying, “I don’t think this is possible at the moment; it seems like this has become an industry for Crypto Twitter.”

InfoFi platforms are known to reward informative content, but according to some netizens, they are currently dominated by spammy, algorithmic activity.

In early September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that it has become nearly impossible to tell when and if social media content is genuinely written by humans.

Altman said the realization hit him after browsing the r/Claudecode subreddit on Reddit, which has been flooded with posts praising OpenAI’s Codex, its coding assistant that competes with Anthropic’s Claude Code.

“That subreddit has so many posts from self-proclaimed Code users announcing they moved to Codex that one Reddit user even joked, ‘Is it possible to switch to Codex without posting about it?’” Altman observed.

He later confessed on X that he could no longer trust what he read online, saying, “I assume it’s all fake/bots, even though in this case I know Codex growth is really strong and the trend is real.”

InfoFi has a flawed incentive model

According to decentralized market analyst DefiGazer, who frequently comments on content monetization systems, InfoFi’s concept is promising. However, he bashed its reward structures for paying large accounts posting low-effort content more than smaller creators with in-depth analysis.

“InfoFi is great, but it gets bad when you start comparing yourself and other creators,” DefiGazer wrote on X. “We have all seen that these platforms do not efficiently reward small accounts who create quality content but reward big accounts posting low-effort threads.”

He took a jab at creators who repeatedly post slogans like “No one is more bullish on (@ so and so project) than me on X,” to dominate the monetization leaderboard. DefiGazer admitted that smaller accounts sharing well-researched content about the same project fall behind in rankings.

InfoFi platforms can tokenize information by turning posts, threads, and insights into tradable digital assets meant to represent the value of online content. Yet, as DefiGazer explained, the technology is inherently dependent on engagement quantity more than informational quality.

“The harsh truth is, these systems value likes, comments, reposts, and shares far more than how informative the content is,” he concluded.

Nikiti Bier, X’s Head of Product, has said the upcoming updates on X will include changes to the platform’s monetization programs. Responding to a question on the platform on his announcement post, he admitted the program may be encouraging spammers. 

“Creator payouts do more harm than good, and we need to off-ramp to a different system,” he said.

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