clanker, Base's "viral Meme machine"
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clanker, Base's "viral Meme machine"
Will Clanker surpass pump.fun as the AI Agent, Meme platform, and Web3 social trifecta converges?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Joe, Foresight News
What is clanker? A social meme issuance platform, an AI agent, and a meme itself.
In November, the Base ecosystem entered a new phase of explosive growth that has lasted for at least three weeks, with clanker playing one of the most critical roles. As of November 26, 2024, CLANKER, the first meme launched by clanker, has reached a market cap of $70 million.
From November 8, 2024, to date, at least three memes issued via clanker have surpassed a $10 million market cap: LUM ($33 million), ANON ($46 million), and CLANKER ($70 million)—and they are still trending upward.
ANON’s associated product, anoncast, leverages ZK-powered anonymous posting. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's founder, mentioned anoncast four times in one week on Warpcast and engaged with engineers discussing how to improve the product. Notably, on November 21, Vitalik personally purchased ANON tokens to experience anoncast firsthand—widely seen as the first time in recent years he has actively bought a meme coin.
The emergence of these memes would not have been possible without clanker. It is rapidly becoming the "hit meme factory" of the Base ecosystem.
Will it continue generating new viral memes? And what does it mean for Farcaster, Base, and even Ethereum?
clanker: Launching Three Meme Coins Over $10 Million
clanker is an AI agent developed by Jack Dishman, a full-stack engineer at Farcaster, and @proxystudio.eth, founder of the Farcaster ecosystem research team. It automates token deployment on the Base network.
As of November 26, 2024, within just two weeks, clanker has deployed 3,500 tokens and generated $4.2 million in revenue.
Unlike pump.fun, clanker issues memes directly within the Web3 social platform Farcaster.
Users simply need to mention @clanker and describe their desired token—including name, content, or even images—and clanker automatically deploys the token. The launch of LUM serves as a prime example.
LUM was minted through collaboration between two AI agents: aethernet and clanker. A Farcaster user named naaate asked aethernet—an AI agent from the Higher community—to help launch a token. Instead of doing it manually, aethernet instructed another AI agent—clanker—to execute the deployment. This marked a milestone event: the first known case of AI-to-AI collaboration in token creation.
Two AIs conversing and successfully launching a token called LUM
The birth of LUM, which quickly reached a multi-million-dollar valuation within days, brought clanker into the spotlight among Base community members.
Another token launched by clanker, ANON, further amplified its visibility beyond niche circles, introducing more people to the tool.
Twitter user @0xLuo explained: “The ANON token was deployed via clanker by anonymous users posting under Superanon—their anonymous account on Supercast, a third-party Farcaster client. Many users later airdropped $ANON to woj, the founder of Supercast, who then redistributed those tokens back to Supercast users—earning widespread praise and boosting community goodwill.”
“Soon after, builders began developing applications around the ANON token. The most notable was anoncast.org, an anonymous posting platform using zk technology that requires users to hold a minimum amount of ANON tokens to post.”
Image source: @0xLuo
anoncast’s use of zk-based anonymity caught Vitalik’s attention. Within a single week, Vitalik posted four updates about anoncast on Warpcast, discussed technical improvements with developers, and ultimately purchased ANON tokens to try the service himself—propelling ANON further into the mainstream. Its market cap stabilized around $46 million.
The success of both LUM and ANON highlighted clanker’s value as a hit-making meme engine. Today, the CLANKER token has surpassed both LUM and ANON in market capitalization, reaching $70 million.
With AI Agent, Meme Platform & Web3 Social—Can clanker Outperform pump.fun?
Combining AI agents, meme issuance, and Web3 social interaction, can clanker surpass pump.fun?
This cycle, the meme sector has largely been dominated by Solana—thanks primarily to the success of pump.fun.
pump.fun (Data source: Dune)
Since March 2024, pump.fun has created 3.79 million memes on Solana and earned approximately 1.45 million SOL (~$360 million) in revenue. It became the fastest Web3 application in crypto history to reach $100 million in earnings. The success of pump.fun directly funneled massive capital and users into Solana, significantly accelerating its growth.
In contrast, most Ethereum-layer-2 networks, including Base, had only limited breakout successes like Degen, with few other major viral memes emerging. Yet, the Ethereum ecosystem hasn’t given up on the meme race. Base is now widely viewed by the Ethereum community as the primary contender to challenge Solana head-on.
And clanker may be Base’s answer to pump.fun—but with key differences.
First, clanker is a product built by engineers deeply embedded in the Web3 social protocol Farcaster. It operates as an AI agent on Farcaster designed specifically for automated token issuance. Its native integration with Farcaster gives clanker inherent social characteristics—all token creation happens directly within the Farcaster environment.
Second, as a meme platform, clanker’s fee structure and revenue-sharing model differ significantly from traditional platforms like pump.fun.
clanker’s transaction fee model is relatively transparent and equitable. It does not charge any upfront fee during token creation but collects fees from trades. Specifically, clanker creates and locks a full-range Uniswap v3 liquidity pool (LP) with a 1% trading fee: 40% of this fee goes to the requester (i.e., the user who initiated the token launch via clanker), while 60% is retained by clanker. In comparison, on pump.fun, users can create tokens at a very low cost—typically 0.02 SOL—but all 1% trading fees go entirely to the platform operators, used for maintenance and liquidity provision.
Finally, clanker places stronger emphasis on integrating AI technology, actively experimenting with diverse ways to combine AI agents with product functionality—a reflection of the strong engineering culture prevalent across Coinbase, Base, and the broader Farcaster ecosystem.
Base Pioneers the Trend of "Utility-Driven Memes"
Unlike Solana’s “purely speculative memes,” Base is pioneering a new trend: “utility-driven memes.” The rise of clanker signifies that Base has successfully closed this innovative ecosystem loop.
From Degen to Higher, LUNA, Aethernet, LUM, and CLANKER, Base’s utility-driven memes are multiplying, with increasingly distinct features forming a clear trend, style, and culture.
These utility-driven memes on Base fall into two categories: memes that evolve into applications, and applications that spawn memes. The former includes Degen and Higher (via Aethernet); the latter includes Farcaster, Virtuals (LUNA), and clanker (LUM).
Core contributors from Base and Farcaster actively encourage developers to build apps while simultaneously launching memes—even launching their own products immediately as memes right after development.
Under competitive pressure from Solana’s ability to attract massive capital and traffic through memes, Base’s emerging framework of utility-driven memes offers a promising path forward for the Ethereum ecosystem. After all, no matter how advanced the technology or compelling the vision, sustainable development requires substantial funding and user adoption.
Both Polymarket and Farcaster exemplify this hybrid approach—merging genuinely useful applications with speculative elements, thereby attracting both true believers and traders who make up a significant portion of the crypto space.
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