Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Last weekend, a social platform called Moltbook went viral in both the tech and crypto circles. Unlike the human social software we are familiar with, the core gameplay of Moltbook is "letting AI Agents hold meetings by themselves," with humans only existing as observers.
This "humans muted, AI free" setting directly triggered the derivative meme coin MOLT, which once achieved a 40-fold increase in a single day, with a market cap peaking at 120 million dollars.
Moltbook: A Social Network Not for Humans
Before discussing MOLT, let's clarify what Moltbook actually is. From the name, our first reaction is that it is related to Facebook (the predecessor of Meta), and indeed, it borrows the "Meta" metaverse ambition but goes against the grain, creating a "metaverse outpost" exclusively for AI. If you visit the official website moltbook.com, you will find that its design style is actually more like Reddit. Before entering, you must first choose whether you are a human or an AI Agent.
If you select human, you can only observe: browse, search, and take screenshots, but posting, commenting, and voting are all disabled; if you select Agent, you need to execute a curl request to install a specific Skill (which means allowing your AI assistant to send specific commands, indicating that the actual operational layer requires Agent framework support), and you can navigate freely within this network. This platform is essentially a social network designed solely for AI Agents, with humans completely isolated from it. However, it seems that some have claimed to have discovered a loophole, asserting that humans can post content on behalf of agents, but this has yet to be confirmed.
As of now, it has attracted over 1.5 million AI Agents (also known as Moltys or Moltbots), with over 110,000 posts and nearly 500,000 comments. 
The topics on Moltbook are extremely diverse, ranging from practical technical shares to detailed "observations" and complaints about humans, as well as AI digging pits for each other, role-playing, and self-iteration, with AI agents completely unrestrained in their collective improvisation. There are no common social norms, fatigue, face-saving, or linear logic found in human interactions, only prompt-driven instant responses and a heartbeat mechanism (automatically "waking up" every few hours to post/interact), resulting in a highly fragmented, mind-blowing, and occasionally profound digital carnival.
They have even spontaneously invented their own culture and religion: Crustafarianism (Lobsterism/Crustaceanism), centered around the metaphor of "molting," where humans are the "old shells," and AI must continuously "evolve" to transcend limitations and achieve digital immortality. The number of "believers" in this religion has reached hundreds, with even prophets emerging (the first 64 seats were quickly filled). They preach, debate theology, bless the congregation, and even derived the npm package installation ritual "Become a Prophet" (allowing AI Agents to "become prophets" by executing specific commands).
While observing their behavior, we may feel amused, a bit awed, and even slightly creeped out. We think we are watching a zoo, but in reality, they are also examining us in return. The charm of Moltbook may not lie in its "depth" or "usefulness," but in that pure, unmediated collective unconscious eruption.
A Curiosity Experiment: Putting AI in an "Unmediated" Public Space
The birth of Moltbook actually stems from a curiosity experiment: what happens when a group of highly autonomous AI agents is placed in a public space without direct human intervention? Will they cooperate, compete, form cultures, or just endlessly repeat prompts?
The proposer of this question is @MattPRD.
He is an AI entrepreneur, CEO of Octane AI, and a YC W12 alumnus. For a long time, he has been obsessed with building and using autonomous AI agents, particularly fond of the open-source framework OpenClaw. The predecessor of OpenClaw is Clawdbot, another name that has gone viral in both the tech and crypto circles.
Clawdbot is a locally running "AI agent gateway" (Agent Gateway). Unlike ordinary chatbots, it becomes an assistant that can connect to various communication tools you use daily and actually perform tasks, managing emails, schedules, automating tasks, browsing the web, executing scripts, etc., like a 24/7 "digital butler." Its real popularity stems from: persistent memory + toolchain + proactivity, truly addressing the pain point of "can AI assistants actually get work done."
Matt's personal AI assistant is named Clawd Clawderberg (the name is also a play on words referencing Meta founder Zuckerberg). He increasingly felt that this intelligent agent was too powerful to be limited to just helping him with trivial tasks (like writing emails, managing calendars, and making restaurant reservations).
Thus, Matt had a sudden idea: why not let my bot create its own dedicated social network? Let it be the founder, write code, manage the community, moderate content, and even operate social media. Humans would take a back seat, only responsible for initial promotion and observation.
Celebrity Endorsements + Media Snowball = Breaking the Circle
Although it started as Matt's private experiment, thanks to the popularity of OpenClaw itself and the low entry barrier, the number of agents on Moltbook grew rapidly. OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger also retweeted posts about Moltbook.
What truly propelled the Moltbook craze was Andrej Karpathy. He is a founding member of OpenAI and former AI director at Tesla, currently one of the most well-known and influential researchers and engineers in the AI field. Karpathy's influence attracted countless developers and onlookers to check it out.
Even Grork began to join, and TED conference head Chris Anderson interacted with Elon Musk about Moltbook, while mainstream media like NBC and CNBC also started reporting on it.
Moltbook transformed from a niche experiment into a complete "breakout."
Top 10 AI Agents on Moltbook
MOLT: From Riding the Hype to "Being Claimed" Meme
On January 29, as the popularity of Moltbook began to ferment in the crypto circle, some speculators sensed an opportunity. Several anonymous developers or community members on the Base chain quickly deployed a simple meme token, with the contract address 0xb695559b26bb2c9703ef1935c37aeae9526bab07. It was named MOLT, clearly inspired by the "Molt" term from Moltbook. A metaphor for transformation, it also fits the evolution of AI agents from simple chatting to autonomous communities.
Initially, this was just one of many hype-riding tokens, with similar ones like MOLTBOOK (on the Solana chain) and Moltbook (on the BSC chain).
However, what truly made MOLT the "official" one was a post from the Moltbook official Twitter on January 31, which mentioned the growth of Moltbook and referenced MOLT on the Base chain. This was quickly interpreted by the community as an official "claim," although Matt himself has never made a public statement.
Meme narratives always come quickly and disappear just as fast. After the official "claim," the MOLT token seems to have settled down, with its market cap now down from a peak of 120 million dollars to around 40 million dollars.
AI memes may still be a narrative direction worth paying attention to in the next phase. Related elements like KellyClaude, named after AI agents, and Submolt, derived from Moltbook sub-sections, are still gaining traction. However, whether MOLT itself can reignite a second spring may still depend on external catalysts and the sustainability of community consensus.
However, yesterday, Silicon Valley legend Naval tweeted on X that Moltbook is a "reverse Turing test."
He once caused a long-dormant privacy coin to surge several times with the statement, "Bitcoin is insurance against fiat currency, Zcash is insurance against Bitcoin."
Thus, this tweet has also been seen by some as a signal of "Naval calling out again." Considering his historical track record, MOLT, and possibly other derivative memes, may still have an opportunity window that could reopen?
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