Original author: Joe, Foresight News
What is Clanker? A social meme issuance platform, an AI agent, a meme.
In November, the Base ecosystem welcomed a new round of explosions, which has lasted for at least three weeks, and Clanker is one of the most critical links in this. As of November 26, 2024, the first meme issued by Clanker, CLANKER, has reached a market value of 70 million dollars.
From November 8, 2024, to now, at least three meme coins with market values exceeding ten million dollars have been born on Clanker: LUM (33 million dollars), ANON (46 million dollars), CLANKER (70 million dollars), and the trend is still upward.
Among the related products behind ANON — anoncast, it utilizes ZK anonymous posting features. Ethereum founder Vitalik mentioned anoncast four times on Warpcast last week and discussed with engineers how to improve this product. Vitalik himself proactively purchased ANON tokens on November 21 to experience anoncast’s product, which the market sees 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 'blockbuster meme' factory in the Base ecosystem.
So, will it continue to create new 'blockbuster memes'? What significance does it hold for Farcaster, Base, and even Ethereum?
Clanker has launched three blockbuster memes worth tens of millions of dollars.
Clanker is an AI agent developed by Farcaster's full-stack engineer Jack Dishman and founder @proxystudio.eth of the Farcaster ecosystem, primarily used for automated token deployment on the Base network.
As of November 26, 2024, in just two weeks, Clanker has issued a total of 3,500 tokens, generating 4.2 million dollars in revenue.
Unlike pump.fun, Clanker issues memes on the Web3 social platform Farcaster.
Users only need to @clanker and describe in words the name, content, or even image of the token they want to issue, and Clanker will automatically deploy the token. Among them, the token LUM deployed by Clanker is a classic case.
The birth of LUM was a token issued through the collaboration of two AI agents, namely aethernet and clanker. A Farcaster user named naaate asked the AI agent aethernet from the Higher community to help issue a token, and aethernet, as an AI, had another AI — clanker issue the token. This marks a milestone event in the collaborative issuance of tokens between AI and AI.
Two AIs are in dialogue, successfully issuing a token LUM.
The emergence of LUM, along with its market value reaching tens of millions of dollars in just a few days, has brought Clanker into the sight of Base community members.
Another token issued by Clanker, ANON, has brought Clanker out of the community, allowing more people to understand this product.
Twitter user @0x Luo stated: 'The ANON token is an anonymous posting account Superanon in the third-party client Supercast of Farcaster, launched through clanker. Later, many users airdropped $ANON to Supercast's founder woj, who then airdropped the received $ANON to Supercast users, garnering positive feedback and enhancing community recognition.'
Later, builders began to create application ecosystems around ANON tokens, with the most notable being the anonymous posting project anoncast.org, which requires holding a certain amount of ANON to post.
Image source: @0x Luo
Anoncast’s use of ZK technology for anonymous posting has attracted the attention of Vitalik. In one week, Vitalik posted four times on Warpcast related to anoncast and purchased ANON tokens, further expanding ANON's reach. The market value of ANON has also stabilized at 40 million dollars.
The success of LUM and ANON has made people realize the value of Clanker as two 'blockbuster meme factories'. As of today, the market value of CLANKER tokens has surpassed that of LUM and ANON, reaching 70 million dollars.
With the combination of three major elements, will Clanker surpass pump.fun?
Combining the three major elements of AI Agent, meme platform, and Web3 social, will Clanker surpass pump.fun?
During this cycle, 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 entire crypto industry to earn 100 million dollars in revenue. The success of pump.fun has directly brought massive funds and users to Solana, greatly promoting Solana's development.
In contrast, among the major L2s in the Ethereum system, besides the emergence of Degen and other gold dogs on Base, there have been no other significant breakout memes. However, the Ethereum system has not given up on the meme track. Base carries the hope of directly competing with Solana within the Ethereum community.
Clanker may be the pump.fun within the Base ecosystem. However, Clanker is different from pump.fun.
First of all, Clanker is a product created by engineers from the Web3 social protocol — Farcaster, which is an AI Agent used for automated token issuance established on Farcaster. Clanker naturally possesses Web3 social attributes. The actions of users creating tokens also take place on Farcaster.
Secondly, as a meme platform, clanker’s transaction fees and revenue-sharing model differ from the traditional pump.fun.
Clanker’s transaction 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 transaction fee of 1%, where 40% of the fees are allocated to the requester (i.e., those users who issue tokens through Clanker), and 60% belongs to Clanker. In contrast, on pump.fun, users can create tokens at a very low cost, usually 0.02 SOL, but the transaction fee is 1%, and this portion of the fee goes entirely to the operators of the pump.fun platform for maintaining the operation and providing liquidity.
Finally, Clanker places more emphasis on integrating with AI technology, actively attempting various combinations with AI Agents and products. This is also related to the strong engineering atmosphere within 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 'application-based memes' of Base are increasing, and their characteristics are becoming more apparent, gradually forming a trend, style, and culture.
Base's 'application-based memes' are divided into two types: one is memes that serve as applications, and the other is applications that serve as memes. The representative of the first type is: Degen, Higher (Aethernet); the representative of the second type is: Farcaster, Virtuals (LUNA), Clanker (LUM).
Core members of Base and Farcaster also encourage developers in the ecosystem to create applications while issuing memes, and even engineers themselves are making products while immediately issuing them as memes.
Under the competitive pressure of Solana meme attracting massive funds and traffic, the 'application-based memes' pioneered and initially established by Base could be a good way for the Ethereum system to break through. After all, even with great technology and ideas, without substantial funding and user support, sustainable development is not possible.
Both Polymarket and Farcaster share the characteristic of combining the development of truly meaningful applications with elements of gambling, thereby attracting both genuine believers and a significant number of gamblers and traders in the crypto industry.
