clanker, the "hot meme generator" on Base

Author: Joe, Foresight News

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

In November, the Base ecosystem has entered a new round of explosion, which has lasted 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 dollars.

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 dollars), ANON (46 million dollars), and CLANKER (70 million dollars), and they are still on the rise.

Among them, the related product behind ANON—anoncast, uses 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 actively purchased ANON tokens on November 21 to experience anoncast's product, which the market sees as Vitalik's first active purchase of a meme coin 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 has launched three "hit memes" worth ten million dollars

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

As of November 26, 2024, in just two weeks, clanker has issued 3,500 tokens and generated 4.2 million dollars in revenue.

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

Users only need to @clanker and then describe in text 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, let another AI—clanker issue the token. This marks a milestone event in the collaboration between AI and AI in issuing tokens.

Two AIs are conversing, successfully issuing a token LUM

The birth of LUM, along with its market value reaching ten million dollars in just a few days, has brought clanker into the sight of Base community members.

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

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

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

Image source: @0xLuo

The anonymous posting feature using zk technology in anoncast has attracted Vitalik's attention. In just a week, Vitalik posted four times related to anoncast on Warpcast and purchased ANON tokens, further expanding ANON's reach. The market value of ANON has stabilized at 40 million dollars.

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 the CLANKER token has surpassed LUM and ANON, reaching 70 million dollars.

With three major elements combined, will clanker surpass pump.fun?

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

In this cycle, the meme track has been "monopolized" by Solana, largely due to 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. Pump.fun has thus become the fastest Web3 application in the history of the entire crypto industry to achieve 100 million dollars in revenue. The success of pump.fun has directly brought massive funds and users into Solana, greatly promoting its development.

In contrast, among the various L2s in the Ethereum ecosystem, aside from the appearance of Degen and other meme coins on Base, there have been no significant breakout memes. However, the Ethereum ecosystem has not given up on the meme track. Base is expected to compete directly with Solana.

Clanker may be the pump.fun within the Base ecosystem. However, clanker is different from pump.fun.

Firstly, clanker is a product created by the engineers of the Web3 social protocol—Farcaster, and it is an AI Agent used for the automated issuance of tokens built on Farcaster. Clanker inherently possesses Web3 social attributes. The behavior of users creating tokens also occurs on Farcaster.

Secondly, as a meme platform, clanker's transaction fees and revenue-sharing model differ from 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%, of which 40% is allocated to the requester (i.e., users who issue tokens through clanker), and 60% goes to clanker. In contrast, on pump.fun, users can create tokens for a very low fee, usually 0.02 SOL, but the transaction fee is 1%, which all goes to the pump.fun platform operators for maintaining the platform's operations and providing liquidity.

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

Base, pioneering a new trend of "application-based memes"

Unlike Solana's "purely speculative 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 loop.

From Degen to Higher, LUNA, Aethernet, LUM, CLANKER, Base's "application-based memes" are becoming more numerous, with increasingly distinct characteristics, gradually forming a trend, style, and culture.

Base's "application-based memes" can be divided into two types: one is memes that serve as applications, and the other is applications that serve as memes. The first type is represented by Degen and Higher (Aethernet); the second type is represented by Farcaster, Virtuals (LUNA), and clanker (LUM).

Core members of Base and Farcaster also encourage developers in the ecosystem to create applications while issuing memes, and even engineers themselves create products and immediately issue them in meme form.

Under the competitive pressure of 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 ecosystem to break through, as even the best technology and ideas cannot sustain development without substantial funding and user support.

Whether it is Polymarket or Farcaster, they share the characteristic of combining the development of truly meaningful applications with gambling elements, attracting both genuine believers and a significant number of gamblers and traders in the crypto industry.