Clanker: The Multimillion-Dollar Meme Factory on Base

Original Article Title: "clanker, the 'Viral Meme Factory' on Base"

Original Article Author: Joe, Foresight News

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

In November, the Base ecosystem saw a new wave of eruption that has lasted for at least three weeks, with clanker being a key part of it. As of November 26, 2024, the first meme issued by clanker, CLANKER, has reached a market capitalization of $70 million.

From November 8, 2024, to date, clanker has seen the emergence of at least three meme coins with a market cap exceeding tens of millions of dollars: LUM ($33 million), ANON ($46 million), CLANKER ($70 million), and they are still on the rise.

The product behind ANON, anoncast, utilizes ZK anonymous posting functionality. Ethereum founder Vitalik has mentioned anoncast four times in one week on Warpcast and discussed with engineers how to improve the product. Vitalik himself actively purchased ANON tokens on November 21 to experience anoncast's product. The market sees this as Vitalik's first active purchase of a meme coin in recent years.

And the birth of these memes is inseparable from clanker's help. Clanker is becoming the "viral meme" factory on the Base ecosystem.

So, will it continue to create new "viral memes"? What is its significance to Farcaster, Base, and even Ethereum?

clanker, Launching Three Multi-Million Dollar "Viral Memes"

clanker is an AI agent developed by Farcaster's full-stack engineer Jack Dishman and Farcaster ecosystem research founder @proxystudio.eth. It is primarily used to automate token deployment on the Base network.

As of November 26, 2024, in just two weeks, clanker issued a total of 3,500 tokens, generating $4.2 million in revenue.

Unlike pump.fun, clanker's approach to issuing memes was conducted on the Web3 social platform Farcaster.

Users only needed to mention @clanker and then provide a textual description of the token they wanted to issue, including the name, content, or even an image, and clanker would automatically deploy the token. Among them, the token deployed by clanker, LUM, is a classic example.

The creation of LUM was the result of collaboration between two AI agents, namely aethernet and clanker. A Farcaster user named naaate had the AI agent of the Higher community, aethernet, help issue a token, and aethernet, as an AI, engaged another AI—clanker—to issue the token. This marked a milestone event of AI-to-AI collaboration in token issuance.

Two AIs engaged in dialogue successfully issued a token, LUM

The birth of LUM and its rapid rise to a market cap of millions of dollars within a few days brought clanker into the view of the Base community members.

On the other hand, another token issued by clanker, ANON, took clanker outside the community, exposing more people to the clanker product.

Twitter user @0xLuo stated: "The ANON token was deployed by clanker based on an anonymous post made by an anonymous user from the Farcaster third-party client Supercast in the anonymous posting account Superanon. Subsequently, many users airdropped $ANON to Supercast founder woj, who then airdropped the received $ANON to Supercast users, receiving positive feedback and increasing community acceptance."

"Later, builders started developing an application ecosystem around the ANON token, with the most prominent being the anonymous posting project anoncast.org, which utilizes zk technology and requires holding a certain amount of ANON to make a post."

Image Source: @0xLuo

Meanwhile, anoncast's anonymous posting feature using zk technology caught Vitalik's attention. Within a week, Vitalik posted four pieces of content related to anoncast on Warpcast and purchased ANON tokens to further break into the circle. ANON's market cap has also stabilized around $40 million.

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

By Combining Three Key Elements, Will Clanker Surpass pump.fun?

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

The Meme track has been "dominated" by Solana in this cycle, which is inseparable from the success of pump.fun.

pump.fun (Data Source: Dune)

Since March 2024, pump.fun has created 3.79 million memes for Solana, earning approximately 1.45 million SOL, about $360 million. As a result, pump.fun has become the fastest Web3 app in the history of the entire cryptocurrency industry to earn $1 billion. The success of pump.fun directly brought massive funds and users to Solana, greatly driving Solana's development.

On the other hand, major Ethereum L2 solutions, other than Degen and other dog coins appearing on Base, have not seen any significant breakout memes. However, the Ethereum ecosystem has not given up on the meme track. Base has been entrusted by the Ethereum community with hopes of directly competing with Solana.

Clanker, perhaps, is the pump.fun of the Base ecosystem. However, Clanker is different from pump.fun.

First of all, clanker is a Web3 social protocol — Farcaster's engineers created a product that serves as an AI Agent for automated token issuance on Farcaster. clanker inherently possesses Web3 social properties. All user token creation actions also take place on Farcaster.

Secondly, as a meme platform, clanker's transaction fee 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 for token issuance but instead takes a fee from transactions. Specifically, clanker creates and locks a full-scope Uniswap v3 liquidity pool (LP) during token issuance, with a 1% transaction fee. Of this fee, 40% is allocated to the requestor (i.e., those issuing tokens via clanker), while 60% goes to clanker. On the other hand, on pump.fun, users can create tokens at a very low cost, typically 0.02 SOL, but there is a 1% transaction fee, with all proceeds going to pump.fun platform operators for maintaining operations and providing liquidity.

Lastly, clanker places a stronger emphasis on integrating AI technology and actively explores various combinations of AI Agents with products. This is closely related to the strong engineering and technical atmosphere of the entire Coinbase group, the base ecosystem, and the Farcaster ecosystem.

Base, Pioneering the New Trend of "Utility Meme"

Distinct from Solana's "purely speculative meme," Base is pioneering a new trend of "utility meme." The emergence of clanker signifies that Base has already interconnected this brand-new ecosystem.

From Degen to Higher, LUNA, Aethernet, LUM, and CLANKER, the "utility meme" of Base is becoming increasingly abundant, prominent, and evolving into a trend, style, and culture.

Base's "utility meme" can be divided into two types: memes as applications and applications as memes. The first type includes representatives like Degen and Higher (Aethernet), while the second type includes representatives like Farcaster, Virtuals (LUNA), and clanker (LUM).

Base and Farcaster's core team also encourage developers in the ecosystem to create applications while generating memes, and even the engineers themselves to release their products immediately in meme form while building the product.

Amid the competitive pressure on Solana memes attracting significant funding and traffic, Base's innovative and emerging "application-oriented meme" could be a good way for Ethereum-based projects to break through the siege. After all, no matter how good the technology and concept are, sustainable development is not possible without substantial funding and user support.

Both Polymarket and Farcaster share this characteristic of combining the development of truly meaningful applications with the element of speculation, attracting both genuine believers/users and a significant portion of gamblers and traders in the crypto industry.

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