Kaito Leaderboards Drive Pre-TGE Buzz, But What Happens After?
This piece takes a critical look across multiple Kaito-aligned launches, $SKATE, $HUMA, $QUAI, and $SOON, to see whether the hype machine sustains itself after the token hits the market.
The new attention economy has a short memory
Crypto has always been driven by narrative. But in 2025, a new mechanism for generating attention has taken center stage: KaitoAI Earn leaderboards. These incentivized campaigns reward early researchers, commentators, and meme-makers known colloquially as “yappers” with future token allocations in exchange for building hype before launch.
The formula is now well understood:
Reward early mindshare
Manufacture a story
Generate demand before TGE
It works. Leaderboards drive visibility, volume, and social proof. But here's the catch:
Does that attention stick?
As soon as tokens launch and airdrops are claimed, the same yappers are already rotating into the next pre-token meta. Prices slide, volumes dry up, and engagement fades.
This piece takes a critical look across multiple Kaito-aligned launches, $SKATE, $HUMA, $QUAI, and $SOON, to see whether the hype machine sustains itself after the token hits the market. The trend is emerging: Narratives are engineered for ignition, but not designed for retention.
We begin with SKATE.
Skate: High volume, big listings, and the post-kaito stall
$SKATE, a token affiliated with the modular gaming layer built on Solana, launched with strong momentum. Backed by prominent exchange listings, including Binance and Bitget, and a deeply embedded Kaito Earn campaign, SKATE entered the market with liquidity and visibility.
TGE (Token Generation Event): June 10, 2025
Launch Price (Open): $0.06506
Day 1 Close: $0.05094
Day 1 Volume: $41.46M
Initial FDV: ~$65M
Current Price (Jul 7): $0.04065
Current FDV: ~$40.65M
Drawdown from TGE Open: ~37.5%
Current 24H Volume: $8.46M
Vol/MC Ratio (July 7): ~139%
SKATE’s early trading reflected a promising debut. On June 10, the token saw a sharp spike in interest, peaking at $0.06539, but quickly corrected to close around $0.05094 , a ~22% retracement on Day 1 alone.
What followed was a familiar arc seen across other Kaito-affiliated launches:
Mid-June: A bounce toward $0.051–$0.048 (June 11–16), supported by post-listing momentum
June 21–23: Heavy volume rotation (~$110M+ in a single day), but without strong directional follow-through
June 30–July 4: Temporary volatility with a spike to $0.06234, then fast decline
July 5–7: Price compressed to $0.04065, confirming a ~37% drawdown from the TGE and a ~22% drop from its July 4 swing high
Social buzz similarly peaked early but deteriorated rapidly. Within 7–10 days of launch, Kaito contributors shifted focus to new leaderboard programs and tokenless campaigns, leading to a visible drop-off in mentions and engagement.
Takeaway: rotation > retention
SKATE had all the right conditions: a large CEX presence, high liquidity, and a reward-driven Kaito ecosystem narrative. But attention didn’t stick. Despite trading at nearly 140% daily volume relative to market cap, SKATE remains a highly rotated, not held, asset.
Its story mirrors other tokens in the Kaito Earn orbit:
Pre-launch hype
Immediate listing-driven volume
Airdrop claims and quick exits
Narrative exhaustion within weeks
SKATE’s market behavior reinforces the evolving critique of Kaito-fueled launches: high visibility, low stickiness.
Huma: Launchpool hype, 0.5% Kaito rewards, and $300m in day-one rotation
Huma, a decentralized payment financing protocol (PayFi), used the full stack of Binance and Kaito to launch its native token HUMA 0.00%↑ on May 26, 2025.
A Binance Launchpool campaign let users farm HUMA by staking BNB, FDUSD, or USDC from May 23–26. Meanwhile, Huma ran a Kaito Earn campaign allocating 0.5% of total supply across three reward “seasons.”
Season 1 Distribution:
0.1% to top ~500 Kaito yappers (30D, 3M, 12M mindshare)
0.1% to contributors across Solana, DeFi, and RWA categories
Distribution gated via SOL wallet registration and Kaito ecosystem token holdings
Trading began on Binance at 13:00 UTC on May 26. By May 27:
TGE (Open) Price: $0.06683
Day 1 Close Price: $0.05936
Drawdown from Open: ~11.2%
Day 1 Volume: $310.37M
Day 1 Market Cap: $102.89M
Current Price (Jul 7): $0.03083
Current Market Cap: $53.44M
FDV: $308.6M
Vol/MC Ratio (Jul 7): ~33%
Despite the buzz from Launchpool and Kaito Earn, HUMA’s trading was mostly rotational. Season 1 rewards were claimable from Day 1, and Season 2 was already teased, encouraging sell pressure rather than long-term holding.
After a brief stabilization around ~$0.05 in early June, the price steadily declined over the following month, dropping by 40% from June 9 to July 7. This trend reflected not just profit-taking, but a broader absence of sticky demand. Daily volume shrank over 90% from Day 1 highs, and the growing gap between FDV ($308M) and real market cap ($53M) reinforced the perception that much of HUMA’s traction was campaign-driven, not product-led.
Takeaway: HUMA shows the classic Kaito Earn pattern: strong optics, huge liquidity, but little lasting traction. The launch was engineered for visibility, not necessarily conviction, and without post-launch utility or demand hooks, early attention rotated out just as quickly as it rotated in.
Quai: Big allocation, deep Kaito integration, strong launch… then silence
Quai, a decentralized, multi-threaded blockchain protocol, ran one of the most generous and deeply integrated Kaito Earn campaigns to date. From January 17 to April 17, 2025, the project allocated a total of 6 million $QUAI tokens as rewards for content contributors:
Claims were open from April 29 to May 12 via the Kipper platform. Weekly snapshots tracked contributors, with top yappers like @0xalank, @basedPavel, and @Abhijeetcg earning up to 5.95% individual mindshare, far higher than in SKATE or HUMA.
While the Quai mainnet launched on Jan 29, the token wasn’t freely tradable until Feb 22, when exchange data became available.
QUAI Day 1 Performance (Feb 22, 2025):
Open: $0.09884
High: $0.2263
Close: $0.1929
Volume: $10.14M
What happened next: rotation, reversal, and long cooldown
QUAI posted one of the most explosive debuts of any Kaito-affiliated token. It surged from $0.09884 to $0.2263 intraday, a 129% rally, and closed at $0.1929 (+95%).
But that was the peak.
Over the following weeks:
Feb 23–26: Price dropped to ~$0.17–$0.18 with a rapid early cooldown.
Mar 1–15: A steady bleed to the $0.12–$0.08 range, mirroring post-hype rotation behavior.
April–May: Support gradually weakened despite some minor rebound attempts.
June–July: The token entered a range between $0.06–$0.07, and as of Jul 7, trades at $0.05266 , down ~73% from close and ~76.7% from the high.
Volume tells the story too:
From $10M on Day 1 to ~$3M now, indicating sharp drop-off in activity.
Even Phase 2 Kaito rewards didn’t materially lift post-TGE demand.
Takeaway: QUAI had every advantage: massive Kaito allocation, strong brand alignment, a hyped TGE, and early price action that screamed momentum. But the attention rotated fast. Even top yappers with >5% individual mindshare couldn’t anchor secondary interest.
QUAI now trades below launch price with no meaningful recovery since March, a case study in how early liquidity ≠ lasting conviction.
Soon: Kaito alignment, Binance Alpha Buzz, and a rough reality check
Soon, a high-performance Solana Optimistic Network (SVM-based rollup), ran one of the most structured and community-aligned Kaito Earn campaigns of early 2025. The project allocated 450,000 SOON tokens (~0.045% of total supply) to the top 100 yappers over a 3-month campaign window.
Campaign Dates: Feb 19 – May 19, 2025
Claim Period: May 23 – June 23, 2025
Eligibility: Kaito leaderboard contributors, early NFT holders, builder badge owners
Reward Type: Token-based airdrop via airdrop.soo.network
The campaign wasn’t just a reward drop , it was embedded in SOON’s identity. Users were granted “Sooner” roles, badges, and social status for participation, reinforcing a grassroots narrative that Kaito yappers were central to SOON’s early evangelism.
TGE and market launch: From buzz to bleed
SOON’s token launched on May 23, with Binance Alpha listings going live on May 24. The token opened at $0.4527, briefly hit $0.4776, and closed the day at $0.4007. Volume on Day 1 surged past $103 million, reflecting heavy speculative activity and exchange amplification.
Selected Market Metrics (as of July 7, 2025):
TGE Date: May 23, 2025
Day 1 Open Price: $0.4527
Day 1 Close Price: $0.4007
Day 1 Volume: $103.1M
Current Price: $0.1529
Market Cap: ~$26.9M
Drawdown from Open: ~66.2%
Drawdown from High: ~68.0%
Vol/MC (Jul 7): ~97%
What happened after day 1?
After the initial euphoria, SOON followed the now-familiar post-Kaito arc:
Late May to Mid-June: SOON held the $0.29–$0.39 range with modest churn and slow decay.
Late June: Support broke below $0.25, with June 27–30 showing accelerated volume and downtrend.
July 5–7: SOON plunged 40% in 48 hours, from $0.22 → $0.13, before a weak bounce to $0.15.
This sharp decline coincided with the end of the claim period (June 23), after which many recipients likely sold, and attention shifted to other Kaito campaigns.
Takeaway: The sooner you sell?
SOON had all the ingredients of a successful launch , strong infra pitch, Binance Alpha visibility, and community-coded incentives. But the token’s 66% drawdown over six weeks suggests hype didn’t translate to conviction.
The Kaito Earn format has become predictable:
Narrative-driven airdrops → High Day 1 volume → Fast airdrop rotation → Price decay as attention moves on
Despite genuine attempts to embed community culture, SOON’s market behavior became a case study in attention fragility. Its Kaito roots gave it a loud launch , but couldn’t stop the silence that followed.
Conclusion: Narrative is cheap, conviction is scarce
The Kaito Earn model has proven to be a powerful engine for pre-launch visibility, but across SKATE, HUMA, QUAI, and SOON, a consistent pattern emerges: Attention spikes at TGE, but fails to convert into long-term conviction.
Despite variations in sector (gaming, infra, PayFi), listing venue (Binance, Bitget), and reward structures, the outcome is strikingly similar:
Tokens pop on Day 1,
Airdrop recipients rotate out,
And price-action flatlines within weeks.
This isn’t a failure of Kaito itself, as a content discovery layer, it excels. But the current model incentivizes narrative creation, not long-term belief. Without utility, retention mechanics, or sustained product demand, most tokens launched through this pipeline are caught in an attention/exit loop.
Until that loop is broken, with token designs that reward holding, not just hyping, the Kaito meta may remain just that: A powerful launchpad that rarely sticks the landing.