Gathering for Free: Embedding Economic Incentives in Social Networks Shape the Diffusion of NFTs

The digital innovation accompanied by explicit economic incentives have fundamentally changed the process of innovation diffusion. As a representative of digital innovation, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) potentially offer new revenue streams in the digital space. However, current researches mainly focus on transaction networks and community culture, leaving the interplay among diffusion dynamics, economic dynamics, and social constraints on Twitter. By collecting and analyzing NFTs-related tweet dataset, the motivations of retweeters, the information mechanisms behind emojis, and the networked-based diffusion dynamics is systematically investigated. Results indicate that Retweeting is fueled by Freemint and trading information, with the higher economic incentives as a major motivation and some potential organizational tendencies. The diffusion of NFTs is primarily driven by a “Ringed-layered” information mechanism involving individual promoters and speculators. The presentation of content contribute positively to the growth of the retweet network. This study contributes to the innovation diffusion theory with economic incentives embedded.