Original title: (clanker, the "hit meme manufacturing machine" on Base)

Original author: Joe, Foresight News

What is clanker? A social meme issuance platform, an AI Agent, a meme.

In November, the Base ecosystem is experiencing a new round of explosions, which has continued for at least three weeks, and clanker is one of the most critical links. As of November 26, 2024, the first meme issued by clanker, CLANKER, has reached a market value of $70 million.

Since November 8, 2024, at least three meme coins with a market value of over ten million dollars have been born on clanker: LUM ($33 million), ANON ($46 million), and CLANKER ($70 million), and they are still on the rise.

Among them, the related product behind ANON—anoncast, uses ZK anonymous posting functions. Ethereum founder Vitalik mentioned anoncast four times on Warpcast last week and discussed with engineers how to improve this product. Vitalik himself actively purchased ANON tokens on November 21 to experience the anoncast product. The market sees this as Vitalik’s first active purchase of meme coins in recent years.

The birth of these memes cannot be separated from the help of clanker. clanker is becoming the "hit meme" manufacturing machine in the Base ecosystem.

So, will it continue to create new "hit memes"? What does it mean for Farcaster, Base, and even Ethereum?

clanker launched three million-dollar "hit memes."

Clanker is an AI agent developed by Farcaster full-stack engineer Jack Dishman and Farcaster ecosystem founder @proxystudio.eth, mainly used for the automated deployment of tokens on the Base network.

As of November 26, 2024, within a short span of two weeks, clanker has issued 3,500 tokens and generated $4.2 million in revenue.

Unlike pump.fun, clanker issues memes on the Web3 social platform Farcaster.

Users only need to @clanker and then describe in words the name, content, and even images of the token they want to issue, and clanker will automatically deploy the token. Among them, LUM, the token deployed by clanker, is a classic case.

The birth of LUM was the result of collaboration between two AI agents, namely aethernet and clanker. A Farcaster user named naaate had the AI agent aethernet from the Higher community help him issue a token, and aethernet, as an AI, had another AI—clanker—issue the token. This marks a milestone event of collaboration between AI and AI in issuing tokens.

Two AIs are having a conversation and successfully issued a token LUM.

The birth of LUM, and its market value reaching ten million dollars within a few days, has brought clanker into the vision of members of the Base community.

Another token issued by clanker, ANON, has brought clanker out of the community, allowing more people to understand this product.

Twitter user @0xLuo stated: "The ANON token was posted anonymously by users in the anonymous posting account Superanon on the third-party client Supercast of Farcaster, deployed through clanker. Later, many users airdropped $ANON to Supercast founder woj, who then airdropped the $ANON he received to Supercast users, earning a wave of positive feedback and enhancing community recognition."

"Later, builders began to construct application ecosystems around the ANON token, the most notable being the anonymous posting project anoncast.org, which requires holding a certain amount of ANON to post."

Image source: @0xLuo

anoncast, which uses zk technology for anonymous posting features, has attracted Vitalik's attention. Vitalik posted four consecutive messages related to anoncast on Warpcast within a week and purchased ANON tokens, allowing ANON to further break out. The market value of ANON has also stabilized at $40 million.

The success of LUM and ANON has made people realize the value of clanker as a platform for two "hit meme manufacturers." As of today, the market value of CLANKER tokens has surpassed LUM and ANON, reaching $70 million.

With the combination of three elements, will clanker surpass pump.fun?

Combining three elements: AI Agent, meme platform, and Web3 social, will clanker surpass pump.fun?

This cycle of the meme track has been "monopolized" by Solana, which cannot be separated from the success of pump.fun.

pump.fun (data source: Dune)

Since March 2024, pump.fun has created 3.79 million memes for Solana and generated approximately 3.6 billion dollars in revenue from 1.45 million SOL. Thus, pump.fun has become the fastest Web3 application in the history of the cryptocurrency industry to achieve $100 million in revenue. The success of pump.fun has directly channeled massive funds and users into Solana, greatly promoting Solana's development.

Looking back at the major L2s of the Ethereum ecosystem, besides Degen and other golden dogs appearing on Base, there are no major breakout memes. However, the Ethereum ecosystem has not given up on the meme track. Base is seen as having the hope of directly competing with Solana by the Ethereum community.

And clanker may be the pump.fun of the Base ecosystem. However, clanker is different from pump.fun.

First of all, clanker is a product created by engineers of the Web3 social protocol—Farcaster. It is an AI Agent used for the automatic issuance of tokens built on Farcaster. Clanker inherently carries Web3 social attributes. The behavior of users creating tokens also takes place on Farcaster.

Secondly, as a meme platform, clanker’s transaction fees and revenue sharing model differ from the traditional pump.fun.

Clanker’s trading fee model is relatively transparent and fair. Clanker does not charge a creation fee when issuing tokens but takes a fee from transactions. Specifically, clanker creates and locks a full-range Uniswap v3 liquidity pool (LP), with a trading fee of 1%, of which 40% is allocated to the requester (i.e., those who issue tokens through clanker), while 60% belongs to clanker. In contrast, on pump.fun, users can create tokens at a very low fee, usually 0.02 SOL, but the trading fee is 1%, and this fee is all retained by pump.fun platform operators for maintaining operations and providing liquidity.

Finally, clanker focuses more on integrating with AI technology, actively attempting various combinations of AI Agents and products. This is also related to the strong engineering and technical atmosphere of the entire Coinbase group, Base ecosystem, and Farcaster ecosystem.

Base is pioneering a new trend of "application-based memes".

Unlike Solana's "purely gambling memes," Base is pioneering a new trend of "application-based memes." The emergence of clanker represents that Base has already connected this brand-new ecological closed loop.

From Degen to Higher, LUNA, Aethernet, LUM, CLANKER, the number of Base's "application-based memes" is increasing, and their characteristics are becoming more pronounced, gradually forming a trend, style, and culture.

Base's "application-based memes" are divided into two types: one where memes become applications, and one where applications become memes. The representative of the first type is: Degen, Higher (Aethernet); the representatives of the second type are: Farcaster, Virtuals (LUNA), clanker (LUM).

Core members of Base and Farcaster also encourage developers in the ecosystem to simultaneously create applications and issue memes; even engineers themselves are making products while immediately issuing finished products in the form of memes.

Amid the competitive pressure from Solana memes attracting massive funds and traffic, the "application-based memes" that Base has pioneered and begun to systematize may be a good way for the Ethereum system to break through. After all, even with excellent technology and ideas, without substantial funds and user support, sustainable development is not possible.

Whether it's Polymarket or Farcaster, they have the characteristic of combining the elements of developing truly meaningful applications with gambling, attracting both genuine believers and the considerable number of gamblers and traders in the cryptocurrency industry.

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