AI Agents, Meme Platforms, and Web3 Social – Can Clanker outshine pump.fun?

What is Clanker? It’s a social meme issuance platform, an AI agent, and a meme in itself.

In November, the Base ecosystem saw a new wave of growth, lasting for at least three weeks, with Clanker playing a key role in this surge. As of November 26, 2024, the first meme token issued by Clanker, CLANKER, has reached a market cap of $70 million.

Since November 8, 2024, at least three meme tokens launched on Clanker have surpassed a market cap of $10 million: LUM ($33 million), ANON ($46 million), and CLANKER ($70 million), and their market performance continues to rise.

Among them, the product behind ANON—anoncast—uses ZK (Zero Knowledge) privacy features for anonymous posting. Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin mentioned anoncast four times in the last week on Warpcast and even discussed with engineers ways to improve the product. On November 21, Vitalik personally purchased ANON tokens to experience anoncast, which is widely seen as his first purchase of a meme token in recent years.

The birth of these memes wouldn’t have been possible without Clanker’s help. Clanker is becoming the “Viral Meme Generator” of the Base ecosystem.

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

Clanker – Launching Three “Viral Memes”, Each Worth of $10 Million

Clanker is an AI agent developed by Farcaster full-stack engineer Jack Dishman and Farcaster ecosystem founder @proxystudio.eth, primarily for automating token deployment on the Base network.

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

Unlike pump.fun, Clanker’s meme issuance happens on the Web3 social platform Farcaster. Users only need to @clanker and describe the token they want to launch, including its name, content, and even images. Clanker will then automatically deploy the token. One notable example is the token LUM, issued through this method.

LUM was launched by the collaboration of two AI agents: aethernet and Clanker. A Farcaster user named naaate asked the AI agent aethernet from the Higher community to help launch a token, and aethernet as an AI agent, in turn, instructed Clanker to deploy the token. This marked a milestone in the collaboration between two AI agents to issue a token.

Two AIs engaged in a dialogue and successfully issued the token LUM.

The creation of LUM, along with its market cap reaching tens of millions of dollars within just a few days, quickly brought Clanker into the spotlight of the Base community.

Another token issued by Clanker, ANON, has helped Clanker gain exposure beyond the community, introducing the product to a wider audience.

Twitter user @0xLuo commented: “The ANON token was deployed by Clanker for posts made anonymously on Farcaster’s third-party client Supercast, under the anonymous account Superanon. Later, many users airdropped $ANON to Supercast founder woj, who then distributed the $ANON he received back to Supercast users, which boosted community recognition and generated positive feedback.”

“Following this, builders began to create applications around the ANON token. One of the most notable is anoncast.org, an anonymous posting project using zk technology, which requires users to hold a certain amount of ANON to post.”

Image source: @0xLuo

The use of zk technology for anonymous posting in anoncast caught the attention of Vitalik. Over the course of one week, Vitalik posted four times on Warpcast about anoncast, and also purchased ANON tokens, which further boosted the token’s popularity. As a result, the market cap of ANON stabilized at $40 million.

The success of LUM and ANON has highlighted the value of Clanker as a platform for creating “viral meme tokens.” As of today, the market cap of the CLANKER token has surpassed both LUM and ANON, reaching $70 million.

Will Clanker Surpass pump.fun by Combining Three Key Elements?

By combining three key elements—AI agents, meme platforms, and Web3 social protocols—will Clanker surpass pump.fun?

For this cycle, the meme space has largely been dominated by Solana, thanks in large part to the success of pump.fun.

pump.fun (data source: Dune)

Since March 2024, pump.fun has created 3.79 million memes for Solana, generating 1.45 million SOL, which is approximately $360 million in revenue. As a result, pump.fun became the fastest Web3 application in crypto history to reach $100 million in revenue. The success of pump.fun attracted massive amounts of capital and users to Solana, significantly boosting its growth.

On the other hand, in the Ethereum ecosystem, aside from a few niche memes like Degen on Base, there haven’t been any major meme breakthroughs. However, Ethereum hasn’t given up on the meme space. Base, in particular, has become the project where the Ethereum community places its hopes to directly compete with Solana.

And Clanker, perhaps, is the pump.fun of the Base ecosystem. But Clanker differs from pump.fun in several ways.

Firstly, Clanker is a product created by the engineers behind the Web3 social protocol Farcaster. It is an AI agent built on Farcaster for automating token issuance. Therefore, Clanker naturally carries Web3 social attributes. The token creation process also happens directly on Farcaster.

Secondly, unlike pump.fun, which operates on a very basic meme creation and transaction fee model, Clanker’s fee and revenue-sharing structure is more transparent and equitable. Clanker does not charge a creation fee when deploying tokens but takes a percentage of the transaction fees. Specifically, Clanker creates and locks a comprehensive Uniswap v3 liquidity pool (LP), with a 1% transaction fee. Of this fee, 40% goes to the user who requested the token (i.e., the one issuing the token via Clanker), and 60% goes to Clanker. In comparison, pump.fun allows users to create tokens with minimal fees, usually around 0.02 SOL, but it takes 100% of the 1% transaction fee for platform operation and liquidity provision.

Finally, Clanker places greater emphasis on integrating AI technology and actively experimenting with various ways to combine the AI agent with its platform. This aligns with the broader engineering culture of Coinbase, the Base ecosystem, and the Farcaster ecosystem.

Base – Leading the Trend of “Utility-Driven Memes”

Unlike Solana’s focus on “purely speculative memes,” Base is setting the trend for “utility-driven memes,” and Clanker represents the completion of a new ecosystem loop on Base.

From Degen to Higher, LUNA, Aethernet, LUM, and CLANKER, Base’s utility-driven memes are becoming more prominent, and their distinct characteristics are emerging as a clear trend, style, and culture.

Base’s “utility-driven memes” come in two types: one is memes used as applications, and the other is applications becoming memes. The first category includes projects like Degen and Higher (Aethernet), while the second includes Farcaster, Virtuals (LUNA), and Clanker (LUM).

The core members of Base and Farcaster are encouraging developers within the ecosystem to create both applications and memes simultaneously, with engineers even launching products and turning them into memes as soon as they are ready.

With the competition from Solana’s meme ecosystem attracting large amounts of capital and traffic, Base’s emerging and developing “utility-driven meme” ecosystem could be the Ethereum-based solution to break through the competition. After all, even with great technology and ideas, without substantial funding and user support, sustainability remains a challenge.

Whether it’s Polymarket or Farcaster, these platforms combine meaningful application development with speculative elements, drawing in both true believers and the large base of gamblers and traders in the crypto industry.

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