Using mouth-shearing wool is becoming a new mining model
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Using mouth-shearing wool is becoming a new mining model
The mouth is no longer just a mining machine; it is becoming an industrial corridor.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: sleepy.mid
Recently, Twitter has been flooded with posts. I've seen many friends securing substantial airdrops from Huma through "mouth mining." In this article, I'll try to break down what's known as InfoFi—what drives it and what changes it brings.
With the emergence and rapid rise of Kaito, we can now clearly see a paradigm shift unfolding within the Web3 world.
In this shift, "mouth mining" airdrops have evolved from fringe behavior into a mainstream participation channel; "information production" has transformed from content creation into a key element of industry identity building; and "narrative ability" is taking over the dominant role previously held by "usage behavior" in airdrop systems.
All of this points to a single trend: attention structures are being reconfigured, information behaviors are being financialized, and consensus is becoming a manufacturable resource.
1｜The Death of Interaction-Based Airdrops Began With Its Illusion
The logic behind old-generation airdrops went like this:
"We build a product, design user interactions, and distribute tokens to early users. This will cultivate usage habits and improve user retention."
This logic established a seemingly reasonable positive expectation between 2018 and 2022, but today it has collapsed:
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A large number of interacting addresses are bots, lacking genuine user intent;
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Projects launch and immediately airdrop, users dump their tokens right after, profiting short-term and leaving;
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The so-called "incentivized retention" has become meaningless, with most projects seeing data plummet after airdrops.
You expect future incentives to shape current user behavior, but users simply don't believe in that future.
More importantly: interaction behavior is no longer scarce or indicative of true user intent.
The conclusion is clear: airdrops were never a cure for product activation—they're just traffic bombs, good for getting noticed, but ineffective at retaining users.
Thus, airdrop logic began shifting—from "Behavioral Finance" to "Information Finance":
It's no longer about what you did, but what you said, who saw it, and how much social diffusion you generated.
This marks a shift in value perception models and a renewed understanding of core drivers in the crypto space:
In a Web3 world where consensus precedes products and narratives precede usage, information itself is the primary asset.
2｜The Three Foundational Logics of InfoFi
If we view InfoFi as a mechanism design, its foundation rests on three dimensions:
1) Reconstructing Value Creation
Traditional airdrops measure "early value" through interaction behavior. InfoFi argues that information behavior itself is the starting point of consensus formation.
Every tweet, every meme, every opinion shared is an act of writing consensus—creating market memory for the future.
2) Identity and Persona Binding Mechanism
On-chain addresses are anonymous, but social behaviors are not. InfoFi binds off-chain identities, expression styles, and social reach capabilities to on-chain addresses, forming an influence-weight system with distinct personality traits.
This improves the accuracy of airdrop distribution, moving beyond the outdated idea that "interaction equals user."
3) Deep Coupling Between Narrative Timing and Capital Release
The alignment between project launch timing and peaks in social discourse allows airdrops to amplify early momentum, trigger attention dividends, and establish liquidity leverage points.
Within this structure, "mouth mining" is no longer a cheap tactic—it’s a deep alignment with crypto consensus logic.
To put it bluntly:
Mouth mining is the native mining model of the information age.
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In PoS, capital serves as collateral;
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In InfoFi, influence becomes collateral.
Under the "mouth mining" logic, you pledge your identity, your opinions, and the social risk of advocating for a project. This is no different in essence from traditional participation—and may even involve higher upfront costs (understanding the project, creating content, bearing reputational risks). It represents a complete value creation pathway.
After on-chain actions have been mechanized and scripted, the mouth remains the only input channel still carrying human warmth. This is why mouth miners gain favor under InfoFi mechanisms—they provide social trust that cannot be forged by smart contracts.
Of course, there are now widespread cases of AI-generated content farms mass-producing cloned posts to farm airdrops—copying text, faking opinions, generating bulk content. This is a challenge that InfoFi projects must address through improved models and identity verification systems.
But just like the Web2 SEO era, even "private blog networks" and "content farms" served certain distribution goals. They don’t break the system—they push it to evolve further.
3｜InfoFi Is Web3's Direct Response to Attention Finance
Let’s compare social media to another infrastructure layer that directly reaches users.
Wallets are the cold-start layer; social platforms are the hot-start layer.
Wallets represent "operational rights," while social channels represent "discursive power."
Within this information-first, asset-later structure, every early user is forced to become a "content distribution node."
You’re not merely promoting a project—you’re building a "consensus atmosphere" for its token release. This atmosphere isn’t intangible; it’s a form of informational friction that legitimizes capital flows.
InfoFi is constructing a mechanism where:
The more social friction surface you generate for me, the more chips I’ll give you.
Under this framework, "mouth mining" is not gaming the system—it’s professional engagement with social consensus mechanisms.
This marks the integration of information as a financial asset within productive relations.
The rapid growth of mouth-mining airdrops reflects the phenomenon where narrative itself becomes the product.
Projects build narratives, users participate in them, platforms identify them, and tokens embody them.
In this on-chain society, narratives launch before products, and content spreads faster than code.
InfoFi is crypto’s legitimate response to the financialization of attention. Mouth mining is a natural mode of participation—not a gray-area tactic.
If usage is proof of participation, then information expression is proof of trust. If liquidity is the lifeblood of markets, then social volume is its source.
4｜Next Steps: Hyper-Individual Consensus Engineering, Information as Organizational Asset
If you’ve paid close enough attention, you may already sense the faint outline of an industrialized logic emerging. A growing number of KOLs are no longer working alone, but engaging in narratives as organized groups.
Future airdrop narratives will no longer be random collective emergences, but carefully orchestrated like film productions—with clear thematic designs, pacing, and role assignments:
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Cold start phase = warming up;
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Pre-IDO = building up to climax;
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Launch day = high-energy peak event;
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Post-airdrop = group debriefing to codify successful narrative templates.
We will see small dissemination DAOs composed of "content creators + topic organizers + social amplifiers + visual designers" collaborating to wage information campaigns.
The most radical projection: information itself will take on part of the liquidity issuance function.
Past Liquidity Bootstrapping emphasized capital coordination; future Info Bootstrapping could determine initial token distribution ratios, price benchmarks, and even circulation windows based on the depth and breadth of narrative spread.
Create the narrative first—the token is merely a prop for the dramatic climax. Information ceases to be just a medium to assets; it becomes part of the asset minting process itself.
We are entering an era where narratives are systematically manufactured. In this era:
Whoever organizes more expressions holds greater consensus-generating power; whoever masters replicable narrative rhythms can forge real "information assets."
The mouth is no longer just a miner—it’s evolving into an entire industrial corridor.
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