What's Driving Token Prices? January 21, 2026

KAITO (-35%) - Last week, X announced it would revoke the API access for platforms and apps that engage in rewarding users for posting, referred to at times as “InfoFi”. Kaito, which is the leader in the InfoFi space, rewards users for posting in their KAITO token, along with aggregating topics across X that are gaining traction and being discussed. The announcement from X blames InfoFi for creating a “tremendous amount of AI slop and reply spam,” which they hope will be reduced as bots stop posting on X in order to earn rewards. The KAITO token dropped -17% on this announcement, but a day later, Kaito’s CEO announced it would sunset its incentivization program and introduce Kaito Studio, a more traditional marketing firm.
TROVE (-30%) - Over the weekend, Trove, a soon-to-launch perpetual futures platform for trading collectibles such as Pokémon cards and Counter-Strike 2 skins, faced a slew of issues, resulting in the broader community labeling the project a rug pull. Trove conducted a public sale between January 8 and 11 but faced scrutiny after extending and then reversing the sale timeline at the last minute. Despite this, Trove managed to raise $11.5M in this sale. Over the weekend, Trove then announced it would pivot its exchange from Hyperliquid to Solana, causing further outcry. The pivot was blamed on a liquidity provider that withdrew the 500K HYPE bond required for exchanges to plug into Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 feature to draw on perp infrastructure. The announcement came only hours before the TROVE token was set to go live, forcing the token to launch on Monday. After the last-minute changes, the project also announced it would refund $100,000 to every ICO participant and increase the allotment for ICO buyers. However, the team reaffirmed that it would retain roughly $9.4M of the assets raised to execute its roadmap. The token has declined by -30% since launch and now trades at a fully diluted market cap of $350K.
PENDLE (-8.1%) - DeFi yield protocol Pendle announced yesterday that it would be upgrading its tokenomics. Pendle, which offers a platform for users to split up the yield and principal on crypto-based assets, traditionally used a “vote-escrow” or “ve” model for its token. However, this model required PENDLE tokens to be locked up over multi-year timeframes, offering little liquidity for investors. The newly introduced model, sPENDLE, will transition to a staking model with a 14-day unstaking window. Pendle will still buy back PENDLE from the market using up to 80% of protocol revenue; however, now those buybacks will be directed to sPENDLE stakers. Stakers are also able to participate in governance as vePENDLE holders were. The project also promises to release a new emissions model next week that will cut down emissions by ~30% although no details on how this will be done have been released yet. Pendle is one of the more differentiated DeFi projects, with its yield offerings generating about $13.5M per year (annualized from the last 30 days of data).
ME (+8%) - On Monday, trading platform Magic Eden announced that starting on February 1, 15% of its revenue would “flow back” into the ME token ecosystem. Of the 15% of revenue, Magic Eden will use half to buy back the ME token, and the other 50% will be distributed as USDC rewards to ME stakers based on their staking power (amount and length of stake). This will replace the existing ME buyback structure announced in November, which allocated 15% to buybacks and 15% to purchasing NFTs listed on the platform. Magic Eden, which initially launched as an NFT trading platform on Solana, has transitioned over time to trading all assets, including tokens and Runes (BTC assets), and expanded to several more chains.

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