Today (in ~15 mins time) we're introducing the first step in a broader upgrade to Kaito’s leaderboards! This update focuses on improving the quality and signal of our rankings - reducing spam, disincentivising gamification, and AI slop, while better recognizing real creators and community members who’ve grown their presence and social capital authentically over time. These changes are vital to Kaito’s long-term vision and success, impacting both our partner projects and genuine participants. Why this matters: We’ve already seen strong results with our Yaps product, where the leaderboard signal is well-tuned and trusted as an open protocol widely used to measure account mindshare/influence. However, project-specific leaderboards have, over time, become trickier, largely due to the conflict between universal inclusivity, financialization, and a diverse set of needs per project. As with the majority of products/platforms that integrate monetization (especially in the age of AI) - bots, and gamification become a prevalent issue to solve for - with AI slop also an issue when it comes to content. While we’ve always aimed to build an open and inclusive network - as opposed to the old model of elusive private deals - this openness has come with certain negative incidental impacts of lower quality content, and gamification - which in turn hurt the majority of real, high quality creators who grew significantly with the network since inception. This trend is only likely to increase with evolving monetization models across every social media platform, including X and the rise of AI-generated content - both inside and outside of Kaito. What’s changing: Just like other platforms (e.g. X’s 5M impressions requirement), we’ll be introducing participation thresholds and stronger anti-spam filters to help protect the integrity of the system. Without this, leaderboards risk becoming unsustainable - losing value for both real creators and the projects using them. With improvements in place, like other platforms - the best, real creators who have developed their social presence, will be recognized most - as the system intends. A more trustworthy and sustainable leaderboard experience helps the entire Kaito ecosystem grow, bringing along our community as we expand into new platforms and products - all with the same values at the core. We also understand that different projects may have different goals when it comes to the types of creators and community members they want to highlight, so we'll work closely with them to tailor to their needs. The changes rolled out today: New Leaderboard Structure (UI): - Creators: Featuring stronger reputation threshold requirements, built using a variety of data points and aspects - dynamically tailored to each leaderboard based on syncing with the project - Wider Community: Showcasing voices who are at an earlier stage in growth, but still are contributing in a meaningful way to a project's content growth Stronger Anti-Spamming and Anti-Farming Filters: - Replies no longer count for leaderboard rankings, to stop reply-guy circles which we are consistently seeing flagged (a forward looking change from now) - Reputation filters cutting out newly spun up accounts, people buying followers, or people paying for engagement What’s to come: - The gKAITO mechanism that not only brings all participants within the kaito eco together, but also attracting more high value creators to join in - A self-alignment mechanism for creators to signal focused alignment - Recategorization of smart followers, cutting out malicious accounts (i.e. follow for follow) - Dedicated mechanism for spotting AI content - Categorization of projects and creators into different verticals for exploration - Integration of onchain activity, holdings, and investments To emphasize, these are the first changes, and we will be treating the improvements going forward as a priority that requires iteration rather than changes all at once. We hugely appreciate the constant interest and feedback that we get, and equally appreciate the patience given whilst we continuously work towards improvements!

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In case you missed it - today at 13:30 GMT/UTC Monad Testnet will pause briefly for a planned upgrade and will be back to normal shortly after. If your transactions aren’t going through, pls don’t panic, just give it a little time. This upgrade will make Monad even faster, more responsive and add features that improve the experience for both users and developers