The financialization of attention is almost inevitable, and the core of the next wave of financial innovation will revolve around how to effectively assess and trade digital Mindshare.
Author: Marco Manoppo
Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow
In 2025, attention will become the "new currency" more important than data.
In today's era, Mindshare has become the key to business success. If you think I’m starting with an obvious point like those typical venture capitalists, you’re right—but please keep reading.
Attention has always been the most important "currency" in the business world. This is also the core logic of commodity sales. Before the advent of the internet, the golden age of print media and advertising had already proven this. At that time, cigarette companies attracted public attention by linking themselves to controversial social issues and movements, thereby increasing sales.
In simple terms, attention brings Mindshare, and Mindshare determines distribution efficiency.
Then came the era of brands. Brands like Nike, Lucky Charms, and Nutella successfully captured consumers' Mindshare through emotionally driven marketing strategies, leading to higher profit margins. Consumers are willing to pay a 30% premium for exactly the same product, simply because of the brand's image in their minds. I myself was a victim of this; back when I was a college student, I crazily collected Supreme's Box Logo, and looking back, it was truly a "shameful era."
I almost spent $1,000 on these things when I should have invested in ETH.
Fast forward to the 2020s, our world has become completely digital, and the competition for Mindshare has shifted online.
This trend was significantly accelerated during and after COVID, but its origins can be traced back to the rise of YouTubers over the past 15-20 years. Early content creators like Ryan Higa and Smosh initially made "fun little videos" out of interest. However, the rise of social media platforms changed everything. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram propelled YouTubers and independent creators to higher positions than most second-tier celebrities through the compound effect of viral dissemination.
For example, Casey Neistat started his daily vlog in 2015. At that time, it was still rare for large YouTubers to leverage their influence for business projects. However, today’s MrBeast has built a multi-million dollar business empire through his content distribution channels. Rhett & Link successfully acquired and expanded the Mythical Entertainment network through their YouTube audience.
It is evident that all businesses today are competing for Mindshare.
Mindshare essentially represents a premium. In modern capital markets, this premium is directly reflected in your stock price or token price. Take Tesla as an example; if Elon Musk did not frequently voice his opinions on social media, its market value might not have reached its current heights. I believe this trend will continue to develop over the next five years and will be further financialized. This also lays the foundation for what we refer to today as "InfoFi."
If you can understand this reference, we can be friends.
What is InfoFi?
InfoFi (Information Financialization) is a concept promoted by Kaito, but I believe its connotation is much broader and deeper than the initial definition.
According to Grok's definition (citing Kaito's perspective), InfoFi is:
"An emerging concept that combines financial incentives with the generation, verification, and distribution of information, primarily applied in decentralized systems. Its goal is to address many issues in the current information economy, such as unreliable data, algorithmic bias, and unfair value distribution, by introducing market mechanisms to ensure that information is more accurate, trustworthy, and can be efficiently organized and disseminated."
This definition is undoubtedly correct, but I believe the core significance of InfoFi is even more profound.
→ Essentially, the core of InfoFi lies in tokenizing the information supply chain.
In other words, information is no longer just a free resource, but an asset that can be valued, traded, and optimized through financial mechanisms.
For a long time, the monetization of attention typically relied on creating a standalone product and then directing attention to that product. This model has proven successful, for example:
Food bloggers profit by recommending restaurants or condiments (like Uncle Roger and David Chang);
Fashion bloggers launch their own clothing brands (like Alexa Chung and the Kardashians);
Fitness bloggers promote protein powders or energy drinks (like Christian Guzman);
Investors and financial institutions profit by selling financial products (like ARK Invest or venture capital funds targeting high-net-worth clients);
Some fake financial mentors profit through trading signal groups (you know what I mean);
Some toxic masculinity influencers profit through multi-level marketing schemes (you know what I mean).
However, we are now entering a brand new era—an era where Mindshare can be traded directly.
Imagine a scenario where, in the future, people no longer need to create derivative businesses to monetize attention, but can directly invest in and trade cultural trends, narratives, or attention cycles. For example, when Labubu becomes a hot topic, there is currently no efficient way for people to bet on its continued popularity. Although a memecoin called $LABUBU briefly appeared, its price movements were more influenced by the overall fluctuations of the crypto market rather than Labubu's own popularity or changes in Mindshare.
InfoFi offers an alternative: a more direct and liquid mechanism for speculating and trading attention itself.
The Key Role of Trustworthy Oracles in InfoFi
For InfoFi (Information Financialization) to truly become a mature and reliable field, trustworthy oracles are indispensable. The main role of oracles is to securely bring off-chain data (such as market sentiment, social trends, etc.) into blockchain systems and ensure that the data is tamper-proof. Since the core of InfoFi revolves around trading narratives, trends, and market sentiment, real-time and accurate data feeds are particularly important.
Currently, oracle solutions like UMA, Chainlink, Pyth, and API3 have already provided important off-chain data services for decentralized finance (DeFi). These oracles support DeFi applications in completing bet settlements, verifying market trends, and aggregating price information from multiple data sources.
Current Challenges and Limitations of Oracle Technology
Although decentralized oracle technology has made some progress, there are still several major challenges to fully support the development of InfoFi:
Lack of real-time sentiment analysis capabilities. Currently, most oracle networks primarily focus on providing price data or the outcomes of structured events. However, the development of InfoFi requires oracles to be able to track and quantify social sentiment, user engagement trends, and viral dissemination indicators in real-time, minimizing delays as much as possible.
Issues of data verifiability and subjectivity. Unlike price data, sentiment analysis often involves subjectivity. For example, how do you define "positive" or "negative" sentiment? How can you ensure that this data is objective, trustworthy, and not subject to human manipulation?
Scalability of data sources. Current oracles typically rely on a limited number of verified data sources, such as exchanges or specific news websites. However, InfoFi requires a broader data coverage, including news articles, social media dynamics, prediction markets, and niche forums, to provide more comprehensive and accurate insights.
Risk of data manipulation. Since the core of InfoFi revolves around speculating on narratives and trends, some may intentionally amplify certain narratives or trends through bot farms or fake participation. Oracles must have the ability to identify and filter these anomalous behaviors to prevent data from being maliciously manipulated.
Economic incentive mechanisms for data providers. How can we ensure that the data provided by oracles is reliable? This requires designing reasonable incentive mechanisms, such as staking, slashing, and reputation scoring, to encourage data providers to report data honestly and effectively constrain misconduct.
Future Development Directions for Oracles
To meet the needs of InfoFi, oracle technology needs to evolve further. Future oracles may integrate the following key features:
AI-Driven Data Aggregation: Extract valuable information from vast amounts of data using artificial intelligence technology, and quickly analyze and integrate it.
Incentive-Aligned Reputation Mechanism: Design reasonable reward and punishment mechanisms to ensure that the behavior of data providers aligns with the system's goals.
Real-Time Trend Validation: Provide faster and more accurate trend analysis and validation capabilities to support financial products based on narratives.
With these improvements, oracles will be better equipped to support the development of InfoFi, providing security, scalability, and resistance to manipulation for narrative- and trend-based financial products.
Expansion of the InfoFi Market Scope
Prediction markets can be seen as an early attempt at InfoFi (Information Financialization), allowing speculators to bet on real-world events based on information advantages. Platforms like Polymarket, Kalshi, and Augur have demonstrated the potential of this model, although their user base remains relatively niche at present.
Similarly, there is the concept of data markets. This idea was proposed during the ICO boom in 2017 (revealing my age), attempting to commodify datasets and allow users to trade them. However, due to the vague value propositions of these projects and inefficient token economic models, they ultimately failed to gain widespread market recognition.
In contrast, InfoFi represents a more mature and scalable version of these concepts. Unlike mere betting or data trading, the core of InfoFi is to transform "Mindshare"—people's attention and interest—into a new tradable asset class.
Here are some possible InfoFi application scenarios:
Narrative-Based ETFs: Design tokenized asset portfolios to track specific topics of interest. For example, an "AI Trend Index" could track popular topics related to artificial intelligence, while a "Metaverse Hype Basket" could focus on discussions around the metaverse concept.
Influencer-Related Financial Instruments: Tokenize creators' future earnings, allowing fans to purchase these tokens and speculate on the creators' future influence.
Memecoin Derivatives: Provide more refined ways for people to speculate on cultural phenomena without relying on traditional cryptocurrency economic models.
Tokenized Media Channels: Tokenize content subscription platforms, allowing users to purchase and trade ownership shares of these platforms.
However, a key question remains for the future of InfoFi: Will a killer application emerge that can establish InfoFi as an independent financial domain, rather than just a branch of decentralized finance (DeFi)?
Key Insights
Redefining the Value of Information. InfoFi challenges the traditional notion that "information is free." It posits that attention, narratives, and data themselves have intrinsic value that can be traded and speculated upon through financialization.
Natural Evolution of the Attention Economy. As Mindshare (i.e., attention) increasingly influences financial outcomes, the market will develop more direct ways to capture and monetize these attention cycles.
Unlocking New Financial Markets. InfoFi opens up a new market that allows people to directly speculate on cultural phenomena, influencer growth, and popular narratives, rather than merely directing attention to traditional business models.
Success Depends on Product-Market Fit. The challenge for InfoFi lies in designing financial instruments that are highly liquid, scalable, and attractive enough to become a new financial paradigm, rather than just another DeFi gimmick.
Final Thoughts
While InfoFi is still in its early stages of development, the financialization of attention is almost inevitable. From prediction markets to influencer-based financial tools to tokenized trends, the core of the next wave of financial innovation will revolve around how to effectively assess and trade digital Mindshare.
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