Kaito founder: The timeline proves that they did not have prior knowledge of X's exact policy; the previous announcement was made pending the outcome of communication.

PANews reported on January 16 that Yu Hu, founder of Kaito AI, provided supplementary information regarding the announcement of "removing Yaps and the incentive leaderboard." Regarding the timeline: his team first received an email from the X platform account manager on January 13th about a possible reassessment, and issued a legal response the same day after receiving formal legal notification; on January 15th, the team and the public simultaneously saw a public statement from Nikita Bier, the X product manager.

Regarding the reason for not issuing any prior announcement, Yu Hu explained that this was not the first time they had received legal notices from the X platform. The previous issue was resolved amicably through a new corporate agreement. Therefore, the team chose to wait for further clarification and communication rather than hastily issuing an announcement. Yu Hu also stated that the new Kaito Studio platform had been in preparation for several months and was originally planned as a supplement to the Yaps model. With the closure of Yaps, Kaito Studio will become the core of the cross-platform business in 2026, while other businesses will remain unaffected.

Previously, X announced the cancellation of post rewards and banned "InfoFi" type applications from attracting users by rewarding posting behavior ; subsequently, Kaito announced that it would gradually shut down Yaps and the incentive leaderboard, and launch Kaito Studio ; 7 days ago, the Kaito team transferred 5 million KAITO to Binance, which was questioned as "knowing in advance about the negative news and selling off their holdings" .