Kaito Ranking: A Project Launching Tool, but How Effective is it After Token Issuance?

The crypto market has long been driven by various narratives. In 2025, a new attention-grabbing mechanism came to the forefront: KaitoAI Earn leaderboard. These incentive activities reward early researchers, commentators, and meme creators ( commonly known as "yappers" ), allowing them to generate buzz before the project launch in exchange for future Token allocation.

This model is now well known:

• Reward early user awareness
• Fabricate stories
• Create demand before the token generation event (TGE)

The effect is significant. Rankings can enhance exposure, transaction volume, and social recognition. But the problem is:

Can this attention last?

Once the token issuance and airdrop are claimed, those active participants will move on to the next token issuance. Prices fall, trading volumes shrink, and participation gradually declines.

This article analyzes several Kaito-related projects, including $SKATE, $HUMA, $QUAI, and $SOON, exploring whether this hype can be sustained after the token issuance. A trend is emerging: the narrative is designed to attract attention rather than to maintain momentum.

Start with SKATE.

Skate: High trading volume, listed on multiple exchanges, and stagnation after Kaito

$SKATE is a Token related to the Solana modular game layer, which had strong momentum at its launch. With the support of multiple well-known exchanges and the in-depth promotion of the Kaito Earn campaign, SKATE had ample liquidity and high visibility at the time of its launch.

• TGE: June 10, 2025
• Issuance price ( opening price ):0.06506 USD
• First day closing price: 0.05094 USD
• First-day trading volume: 41.46 million USD
• Initial Fully Diluted Valuation ( FDV ): approximately $65 million
• Current price ( July 7 ): 0.04065 USD
• Current FDV: approximately 40.65 million USD
• Decline after TGE: approximately 37.5%
• Current 24-hour trading volume: 8.46 million USD
• Trading Volume/Market Cap Ratio ( July 7 ): Approximately 139%

The early trading of SKATE showed a good start. On June 10th, the attention on this token surged sharply, with the price once soaring to $0.06539, but then quickly retracing to around $0.05094, resulting in an approximately 22% pullback on the very first day.

Subsequently, when other projects under Kaito were launched, similar trends also appeared:

• Mid-June: Supported by momentum after listing, the price rebounded to $0.051 to $0.048 from June 11 to 16, (.
• June 21 to 23: Trading volume fluctuated significantly with a daily trading volume of approximately $110 million ), but there was a lack of strong directional trends.
• From June 30 to July 4: There was a brief fluctuation, which once soared to $0.06234, and then quickly fell.
• From July 5 to July 7: the price fell to $0.04065, a decline of about 37% since the token issuance event, and a drop of about 22% since the peak on July 4.

Social media buzz also peaked early but then declined rapidly. Within 7 to 10 days after launch, Kaito contributors shifted their attention to new leaderboard projects and token activities, resulting in a significant drop in mentions and engagement.

Summary: Rotation is greater than retention

SKATE has all the favorable conditions: listing on major exchanges, high liquidity, and a reward-oriented Kaito ecosystem narrative. However, the attention on SKATE has not been sustained. Despite SKATE's daily trading volume approaching 140% of its market capitalization, SKATE remains a high-turnover asset with no long-term holders.

The story of SKATE is similar to that of other tokens in the Kaito Earn ecosystem:

• Hype before launch
• Immediately drive trading volume after launch
• Airdrop Claim and Quick Exit
• Narrative exhaustion within a few weeks

The market performance of SKATE further confirms the criticism of the projects promoted by Kaito: high exposure, low user stickiness.

Huma: Launchpool hype, Kaito rewards 0.5%, first day rotation amount reaches 300 million USD

Huma is a decentralized payment financing protocol ( PayFi ), which utilizes the complete technology stack of a certain trading platform and Kaito, and will issue its native Token HUMA on May 26, 2025.

A certain trading platform's Launchpool event allows users to mine HUMA by staking BNB, FDUSD, or USDC from May 23 to 26. At the same time, Huma also launched the Kaito Earn event, allocating 0.5% of the total supply across three "Seasons".

Distribution situation for the first quarter:

• 0.1% allocated to the top 500 participants in the Kaito ranking
• 0.1% allocated to contributors in the Solana, DeFi, and RWA categories
• Distribution to holders registered through the SOL wallet and Kaito ecosystem Token.

A trading platform started trading on May 26 at 21:00 ( UTC+8 ). As of May 27:

• TGE( Opening Price ): 0.06683 USD
• First day's closing price: 0.05936 USD
• Opening retracement: approximately 11.2%
• First day trading volume: 310.37 million USD
• Day 1 Market Cap: $102.89 million
• Current Price ( July 7 ): 0.03083 USD
• Current Market Value: 53.44 million USD
• FDV: $308.6 million
• Trading Volume/Market Cap Ratio ( July 7 ): ~33%

Despite the hype from Launchpool and Kaito Earn, most of HUMA's trading is rotational trading. The first season rewards can be claimed from day one, and the second season has also been announced, which has led to increased selling pressure rather than long-term holding.

After briefly stabilizing at around $0.05 in early June, the price continued to decline over the next month, dropping by 40% from June 9 to July 7. This trend reflects not only profit-taking but also a lack of sustained demand. Daily trading volume shrank by over 90% from the peak on the first day, while the gap between FDV(3.08 billion) and the actual market value(5.3 million) continued to widen, further reinforcing the market's view that much of HUMA's appeal is driven by activity rather than the product itself.

Summary: HUMA exhibits a typical Kaito Earn model: bright data, huge liquidity, but lacks lasting appeal. Its launch aims to enhance exposure rather than gain steadfast support, and due to a lack of practicality and demand post-launch, early attention comes quickly and fades just as fast.

Quai: Large-scale distribution, deep Kaito integration, strong launch... then falls into silence

Quai is a decentralized multi-threaded blockchain protocol that has launched the most generous and deeply integrated Kaito Earn activity to date. From January 17, 2025 to April 17, 2025, the project has allocated a total of 6 million $QUAI tokens to reward content contributors:

• 5.5 million QUAI tokens are used for the Kaito leaderboard.
• 500,000 QUAI for the exclusive Quai leaderboard

From April 29 to May 12, users can receive it through a certain platform. Weekly snapshots track contributors, with some top yappers obtaining up to 5.95% of the personal recognition share, far exceeding SKATE or HUMA.

Although the Quai mainnet was launched on January 29, the Token could only be freely traded after the exchange data was released on February 22.

The performance of QUAI on the first day ( February 22, 2025 ):

• Opening price: 0.09884 USD
• Highest Price: 0.2263 USD
• Closing Price: 0.1929 USD
• Trading Volume: 10.14 million dollars

Subsequent trend: rotation, reversal, and a long cooling period.

QUAI is one of the most striking new projects among the tokens under Kaito. Its price soared from $0.09884 to $0.2263 during the session, an increase of 129%, and finally closed at $0.1929, with a gain of 95%.

But this is already the highest point.

In the coming weeks:

• February 23 to 26: The price fell rapidly, dropping to around $0.17 to $0.18.
• From March 1 to 15: The price continued to decline to the range of $0.12 to $0.08, reflecting the normal performance of capital rotation after speculation.
• April to May: Despite several attempts at small rebounds, the support gradually weakened.
• June to July: The price range of the Token is between $0.06 and $0.07. As of July 7, the trading price is $0.05266, down about 73% from the closing price and down about 76.7% from the highest price.

Trading volume also indicates the situation:

• From the initial 10 million dollars to the current approximately 3 million dollars, indicating a sharp decline in activity.
• Even the Kaito rewards in the second phase did not significantly increase demand after the TGE.

Summary: QUAI has many advantages: a large allocation of Kaito, strong brand influence, a highly anticipated TGE, and a strong early price trend. However, attention is quickly shifting. Even the leading yapper has not been able to stabilize interest in the secondary market.

The current trading price of QUAI is below the issuance price, and there has been no significant recovery since March, which fully demonstrates that early liquidity does not equate to lasting confidence.

Soon: Integration with Kaito, a booming trading platform, and reality verification

Soon, a high-performance Solana Optimistic Network ( based on SVM rollup ), ran one of the most structured and community-cohesive Kaito Earn activities in early 2025. During the 3-month activity period, the project allocated 450,000 SOON Tokens ( to the top 100 yapper, accounting for approximately 0.045% of the total supply ).

• Event Date: February 19, 2025 - May 19, 2025
• Claim Period: From May 23, 2025 to June 23, 2025
• Eligibility: Kaito leaderboard contributors, early NFT holders, builders badge owners

This event is not just a reward airdrop, but also integrates the brand image of SOON. Participating users will receive the "Sooner" role, badge, and social status, which reinforces that Kaito yappers are the key force in the early dissemination of SOON.

TGE and Market Release: From Hot Debate to Soaring Popularity

The SOON Token was issued on May 23 and listed on a trading platform on May 24. The opening price of the token was $0.4527, briefly touching $0.4776, and the closing price for the day was $0.4007. The trading volume on the first day exceeded $103 million, reflecting a large amount of speculative activity and the amplification effect of the exchange.

Some market indicators ( as of July 7, 2025 ):

• TGE Date: May 23, 2025
• Opening price on the first day: 0.4527 USD
• First day closing price: 0.4007 USD
• First day trading volume: 103.1 million USD
• Current Price: 0.1529 USD
• Market Cap: Approximately $26.9 million
• Opening Retracement: Approximately 66.2%
• Maximum drawdown: approximately 68.0%
• Trading Volume/Market Cap Ratio ( July 7 ): Approximately 97%

What happened after the first day?

After the initial excitement, SOON has followed the now-familiar post-Kaito era curve:

• Late May to mid-June: SOON remains in the range of $0.29 to $0.39, with little fluctuation and a slow decline.
• Late June: Support level broke below $0.25, with trading volume increasing from June 27 to 30, showing an accelerating downtrend.
• July 5 to 7: SOON plummeted by 40% within 48 hours, dropping from $0.22 to $0.13, before slightly rebounding to $0.15.

This crash coincided with the end of the claiming period on June 23, (. After that, many claimants may have sold their tokens and shifted their attention to other Kaito activities.

Summary: The earlier you sell, the better?

SOON