Attention. Distribution. Product. Value.
For any founder in Web3, these four words represent the pillars of a successful protocol. A common observation, popularized by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, is that "first-time founders are obsessed with product. Second-time founders are obsessed with distribution." While a superior product is a necessary foundation, the most experienced builders understand a crucial truth: in this hyper-connected world, attention is a currency, and distribution is king.
At Caldera, we've lived this evolution. Our journey started with an intense focus on building the most robust, scalable, and developer-friendly platform for deploying application-specific rollups. We were fortunate to find a strong product-market fit early, allowing us to build a powerful infrastructure layer that now powers a diverse ecosystem.
But great infrastructure, by its nature, can often be invisible. We realized that to truly empower the next generation of builders on our platform and showcase innovations like The Metalayer, a new focus was required. We needed to master the attention flywheel: the virtuous cycle where a valuable product captures attention, that attention drives distribution and adoption, and this adoption creates exponential value for our partners, our community, and the Caldera ecosystem as a whole.
Reframing InfoFi - From Incentives to Information Markets
The term "InfoFi" has sometimes been met with skepticism, often viewed as a mechanism for "paid shilling." This perspective, however, misses the fundamental market dynamic at play.
The goal of a well-designed InfoFi ecosystem is not to incentivize noise, but to create a transparent market that surfaces and rewards high-quality information. It provides a flywheel of education and awareness, allowing builders with genuinely valuable products to cut through the noise and reach the limelight. As Kaito founder Yu Hu stated, the relationship between attention and value in legitimate projects is indirect but powerful:
Attention → User Adoption & Investor Education → Stronger Fundamentals → Value
In crypto, this effect is amplified. A protocol’s users are often their largest token holders, meaning a single piece of insightful content can simultaneously drive product adoption and educate potential investors. InfoFi provides the tools to measure and bootstrap this powerful flywheel.
A Case Study in Quality - The Caldera x Kaito Dashboard
To navigate this new economy with precision, Caldera recently partnered with pioneers like Kaito, a Web3 search and intelligence platform. Rather than relying on abstract theory, we have worked with Kaito to provide a tangible solution for our ecosystem: the official Caldera Yapper Leaderboard, which we have integrated directly into our own Catalyst app site.
This partnership provides a sophisticated toolkit for our ecosystem to identify and cultivate a genuine community, moving far beyond simple engagement metrics. The system is engineered to favor signal over noise.
A key innovation is Kaito's use of AI-analyzed tags. Instead of just counting likes or retweets, the platform analyzes the substance of a user's contributions, categorizing them along several vectors: Casual vs. Hardcore, Shitposter vs. Curator, and Creative vs. Copy Pasta. This allows projects to precisely identify and reward their most valuable community members - the hardcore, creative curators who provide real educational value, not just high volume.
Furthermore, an interactive social graph (see image below) allows projects to visualize their community's structure and see how information flows between key contributors. This transforms community building from guesswork into a data-driven strategy, focused on fostering a truly interconnected and well-informed participant ecosystem.
From Attention to Action - Closing the Loop
Capturing attention is only the first step. For the flywheel to turn, that attention must convert into tangible action. This is where InfoFi moves beyond a simple leaderboard and becomes a full-funnel conversion engine.
Kaito's ecosystem is designed to bridge this gap, converting attention into user and capital formation. A recent collaboration with Newton, a digital asset platform, provides a clear example. Kaito's "Earn" campaign helped Newton activate nearly 34,000 agents to deploy capital for recurring buys of assets like BTC and ETH.
This is the flywheel in its most powerful form. Attention generated through quality information directly led to significant, measurable on-chain activity and fee generation for an application. It proves that when harnessed correctly, InfoFi is a powerful distribution channel that helps appchains acquire real, engaged users.
The Future is an Empowered Information Economy
The world is only moving in one direction - platforms that command screen time will command distribution, and individuals that command attention will command monetization. Rather than fighting this trend, Web3 gives us the tools to build fairer networks that empower everyone.
Our vision at Caldera is not just to provide world-class infrastructure. It is to foster the vibrant, educated, and engaged communities that will build the future on top of it. By embracing InfoFi and attention, we can help our ecosystem partners get their products into the hands of users, connect with aligned capital, and build lasting value. We are committed to pushing these boundaries, ensuring the most innovative projects have the tools they need to capture the attention they rightfully deserve.
About Caldera
Caldera is one of the fastest-growing rollup ecosystems on Ethereum, empowering web3 teams to launch high-performance, customizable, application-specific rollups. Dozens of leading EVM chains, including Manta, Apechain, Kinto, Injective, RARI Chain and Zero Network by Zerion, use our trusted Rollup-as-a-Service platform to enjoy unified connectivity with rollups across all leading frameworks.
