In November 2024, in a corner of the Web3 world, a platform not dominated by media or research institutions began to generate pricing signals that frequently outpaced traditional information systems' assessments of real-world events. These prices did not originate from authoritative opinions, but rather from a consensus gradually calibrated through continuous negotiation by a large number of anonymous participants, who bore real economic costs—it resembled a new mode of information production, quietly taking shape. This phenomenon is noteworthy not because of the accuracy of the specific results, but because information expression was, for the first time, systematically endowed with a cost structure—when judgment requires a price, low-cost noise is more easily marginalized, while true beliefs are more likely to emerge. In a November 2024 article, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin summarized this method of acquiring information through market mechanisms as Information Finance (InfoFi), defining it as: "A discipline that starts with the facts you want to know and then deliberately designs the market to optimally acquire that information from market participants." The key to this definition lies not in "prediction," but in design—designing a mechanism that forces the judgments, experiences, and intuitions scattered among countless individuals to become explicit through competition and incentives, ultimately condensing into price signals. In other words, InfoFi is not concerned with "who is right," but rather with the incentive structure under which true information is most likely to emerge. The above content is excerpted from Web3Caff Research's "21,000-Word Research Report on the Information Finance (InfoFi) Track: When Information Becomes an Asset, How Does the Pricing Logic and Trust System of Web3 Finance Evolve? A Panoramic Analysis of Its Development History, Competitive Landscape, Representative Projects, Risks and Challenges, and Future Prospects" Click to view the full version 👇