The attention economy has no market price while crypto is building one

AttentionFi protocol Trendle is turning narrative momentum into a perpetual market where traders can go long or short on attention.

Narratives are what set the tone in the crypto space. A trending technology that has turned into a buzzword, like AI, can make all related assets skyrocket, while a single regulatory headline can wipe billions from the market in a matter of hours. Thus, staying glued to the screen is not an uncommon habit among crypto traders.

Attention already carries economic value elsewhere. Big Tech platforms price it every day through private ad auctions, where advertisers bid for access to specific audiences. Yet in crypto, the narratives attracting that attention rarely become markets themselves.

Most prediction markets only allow speculation on binary outcomes. Participants trade contracts tied to questions with a definitive answer, like yes or no. Once the event concludes, the contract is settled and paid out accordingly. The narratives that build the outcome, however, are left outside the market.
At the same time, traders use sentiment data to evaluate the public attention around those events. Yet, the underlying inputs and calculations mostly remain hidden, limiting how much confidence traders can place in the resulting signals.

The buildup becomes tradable

Crypto can bring the pricing of attention into the open. AttentionFi turns changes in public interest from an input used by advertisers and traders into something market participants can take a position on directly.

Trendle, an attention finance protocol, applies this model to prediction markets. The protocol shifts the focus from the outcome to the narrative itself, and lets traders go long or short on how much attention a subject attracts over time.

To make that possible, Trendle introduces Attention Indexes that aggregate activity from major social media platforms, such as X, Reddit and YouTube. These indexes track how interest changes over time around a wide variety of subjects, and give traders exposure to the rise and fall of narratives rather than waiting for a binary outcome.

The design also changes how markets behave. As positions are perpetual and not tied to a fixed resolution date, they remain open to keep track of the evolution of a narrative. A topic can cool off after an initial burst of interest, only to return when new developments occur, not forcing traders to enter an entirely new market each time. 

The Attention Index supplies the reference point, but it does not dictate the market price. Traders do. A funding rate mechanism keeps longs and shorts in check as positions build on either side.

Trendle also brings discovery into the trading interface through Pulse, a live social feed built for spotting new discussions and following market activity.

Live in closed beta

The concept of a perpetual attention market for crypto narratives is already attracting early users. Backed by decentralized protocol Azuro, Trendle is live in closed beta on Monad, where it has recorded more than $1.4 million in cumulative trading volume. The project also launched Attention Markets Arena to hold weekly competitions and add another layer of engagement.

As for the future, Trendle plans to expand beyond crypto and offer exposure to sports, politics and influencers. The roadmap also includes a zero-knowledge verification layer that will allow the inputs behind the Attention Index to be verified onchain and create a fully trustless market.

“Attention is becoming an asset class. Trendle is building liquidity for narratives — a real-time, verifiable market layer where the world can price what it will care about next. As InfoFi matures, onchain attention markets become core infrastructure for trading, hedging and understanding culture itself,” says Mike Rychko, head of go-to-market at Trendle.

InfoFi turns information signals into economic activity by making them measurable and tradeable. Trendle applies the model to attention and provides traders with a market for social momentum that often forms before capital moves.