Kaito token airdrop claims for 'Yappers' go live on Base ahead of exchange listings

Airdrop claims for the much-anticipated KAITO token launch on Base are now live .

KAITO has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, with 10% allocated to the initial community and ecosystem airdrop and around 24% of the KAITO supply circulating upon listing on centralized exchanges such as Binance and OKX at 1 p.m. UTC.

The initial 10% airdrop distribution includes the early Kaito Yapper community, Genesis NFT holders and ecosystem Yappers and partners, according to the project's tokenomics . An additional 2% has been allocated to the Binance Hodler airdrop program.

Of the remaining supply, 32.2% is allocated to ecosystem and network growth, 7.5% is set aside for long-term creator incentives and 5% for liquidity. A further 10% is reserved for the Kaito Foundation, 25% for core contributors and 8.3% for early backers.

Data analytics platform Kaito is an AI-powered crypto search engine and "InfoFi" network designed to streamline the search and tracking of tickers, topics and narratives across web3 sources and to distribute attention and capital more fairly, transparently and efficiently, according to its website.

KAITO is the native token of the Kaito network, enabling decentralized governance, driving market forces and rewarding social media "Yappers" in the burgeoning tokenized attention economy. The token's launch comes less than a week after the release of Kaito's whitepaper.

The growing popularity of Kaito Yaps

The popularity of Kaito Yaps has surged on Crypto Twitter in recent months, leveraging AI algorithms to assess the relevance, engagement and originality of social media posts to measure their attention value, according to the project. Kaito can then sell this trend data on to various crypto projects to earn revenue.

These "Yappers" connected their X accounts to Kaito to earn points in the attention economy, with the expectation that they would eventually convert into a valuable token airdrop. Some users describe it as a "game-changing" product, claiming it can eliminate the need for key opinion leader programs and place everyone on the same playing field. Kaito argues that tokenized attention acts as an open, permissionless building block, supporting various use cases such as SocialFi development and reward distribution.

The Yapper Leaderboard is a public dashboard that tracks and ranks the contributions and influence of content creators in real time for any specific brand or topic. The top users have captured over 6% mindshare on the network since launch, earning the most points ahead of Thursday's airdrop. A snapshot of Yaps was taken on Feb. 17.

Amid the excitement, analysts have estimated Yaps could be worth between $20 and $140 per point, depending on its full diluted value, with KAITO trading at a $1.3 billion FDV on Aevo’s pre-launch market ahead of going live.

Not everyone is so enthusiastic about the project and token launch, however, which also received criticism for only publishing its tokenomics at the last minute. "Kaito has made CT a much s******r place," Hasu, Strategy Lead at Flashbots and Strategic Advisor to Lido said earlier this month. "Discussion quality has gone down, outrage marketing has further gone up. You can really tell which people are performing for the algorithm."

"Kaito is not really that interesting and doesn’t need a token. Pass. Won’t be here in 6 months," another community member and crypto trader said .