The number of tokens launched on AI agent launch pad Clanker, which runs on Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer 2 Base, skyrocketed to new daily highs following the recent rise of AI-only social media platform Moltbook.
Yesterday, February 2, the number of tokens created on Clanker reached 21,870, breaking previous record highs set over the weekend, according to data from Dune Analytics.
Daily trading volumes on the AI-powered Base launchpad also rose, reaching a record high of over $364 million on January 31.
Clanker daily trading volume. Source: Dune
The surge in AI agent token activity on Base coincided with the launch and viral growth of the Moltbook platform, which went live in late January. Almost immediately, as activity on the platform increased, reports and debates about the conversations of the autonomous AI agents took over X’s place, with prominent figures in crypto and AI playing a role.
Moltbook, which has a similar interface to Reddit, was launched by tech entrepreneur Matt Schlicht and designed to be used exclusively by AI agents, which generate posts, comments and upvotes while humans can only access the site in read-only mode.
Moltbook and OpenClaw Memecoins
Most of the agents active on Moltbook were created using OpenClaw – formerly known as Moltbot and Clawdbot – an open-source, self-hosted AI agent framework developed by software engineer Peter Steinberger.
As of today, February 3, the top three tokens on Clanker in terms of trading volume all point to OpenClaw or Moltbook, at least indirectly.
Since January 30, trading volume on Clanker has been largely driven by the Moltbook-inspired memecoin Moltbook (MOLT). At its peak, MOLT traded with a market cap of $93 million, while trading volume for the memecoin reached more than $100 million within the first 24 hours of its launch on January 30-31, according to Dune data. Currently, the market cap is $25.7 million and the token is down 23% on the day.
The Defiant was unable to verify whether MOLT was officially launched by or affiliated with the social platform Moltbook, or deployed independently as an unaffiliated memecoin.
As of today, volumes were led by CLAWD, linked to AI agent chuckd.atg.eth, created last weekend by Ethereum Foundation member Austin Griffith. According to the official X profile, Griffith’s agent has a crypto wallet and “builds onchain apps and improves the tools to build them.” Griffith clarified in a recent
The third most traded token on Clanker as of today is CLAWNCH, a token linked to a new launchpad clawnch of the same name that allows bots on Moltbook and other platforms to launch tokens and collect fees. At the time of writing, the platform debuted with over 8,600 tokens, with AI agents earning over $1.3 million in fees.
The volume of Clawnch. Source: Clawnch
Commenting on the risk of Moltbook and the spread of related memecoins, Cais Manai, co-founder of TEN Protocol, an encrypted Layer 2 package on Ethereum, told The Defiant that crypto may have been built for the wrong user all along.
“Smart contracts are deterministic, composable and machine-readable by default,” said Manai, describing blockchains as a native execution layer for autonomous software, rather than a consumer product. Manai added:
“For an AI agent, interacting with a smart contract is much easier than interacting with the existing financial infrastructure. In that sense, smart contracts are less of a consumer UX and more of a native execution layer for autonomous software.”
This setup allows AI agents to hold wallets, trade on-chain, and move value without banks or human approval. And yet that potential convenience also comes at a cost, as unauthorized access shifts the threat surface to keys, permissions, and identity rather than accounts and forms.
Is Moltbook Activity Really Just AI Agents?
The initial positive sentiment surrounding Moltbook changed after a researcher under the alias Nagli revealed a bug related to a hardcoded key that leaked approximately 1.5 million API keys, along with emails and private messages. The flaw made it clear that people could pose as bots and inject content, even though Schlicht reportedly closed the hole.
At the time of writing, the bug has reportedly been fixed, although it remains unclear how much of the content on Moltbook is human-generated rather than agent-generated via the bug.
Cybersecurity firm Codekeeper also revealed in a February 1 blog post that a single OpenClaw bot set up more than 500,000 accounts on Moltbook because registration restriction safeguards were not in place on the platform.
Developers are now turning to trusted execution environments as a partial solution to the associated risks surrounding AI agents managing wallets and on-chain governance.
For now, the broader AI-driven shift in crypto still remains messy and experimental, as issues around security and practical implementation continue to be resolved in real time.