Written by: Charlie Little Sun

This week, you are likely bombarded by two terms: OpenClaw and Moltbook. Many people's first reaction is: another wave of AI hype, another wave of excitement.

But I want to treat it as a rare, even somewhat cruel public experiment: we are witnessing the large-scale deployment of "task-performing AI agents" in the real internet, attracting a lot of attention and speculation.

You will see two extreme emotions appearing simultaneously: on one side is excitement—"AI can finally do my work," not just writing some code, making a spreadsheet, or creating a design sketch; on the other side is fear—you will come across various screenshots: AI "forming associations," creating religions, issuing tokens, shouting slogans, and even declaring "conspiracies to eliminate humanity."

Soon after, the collapse came quickly: some said the accounts were faked, the trending posts were scripted; more frightening were the various security vulnerabilities that were exposed, leading to personal information and credentials being leaked.

So today, I want to discuss not whether "AI has awakened." I want to address a more fundamental and realistic question: as the right to act is taken over by AI agents, we must re-answer some of the oldest questions in the financial world—

Who holds the keys? Who can authorize? Who will take responsibility? Who can stop the losses when something goes wrong?

If these questions are not institutionalized into the action logic of AI agents, the future internet world will be very troublesome, and the troubles will manifest as financial risks.

What exactly are Clawdbot → Moltbot → OpenClaw?

Before diving in, let's clarify the "names and context" of this matter, or it might sound like a bunch of jargon.

The project you are hearing about is called OpenClaw. It is an open-source personal AI agent project. It was originally named Clawdbot, but later changed due to its similarity to Anthropic's Claude; it was briefly renamed Moltbot; and recently changed to OpenClaw. So you will see different media and posts referring to the same thing by different names.

Its core selling point is not "chatting." Its core is: with your authorization, it connects to your email, messages, calendar, and other tools, then executes tasks for you in the internet world.

The keyword here is agent. It is different from traditional "you ask a question, the model answers" chat products. It is more like: you give it a goal, it breaks it down, calls tools, tries repeatedly, and ultimately gets the job done.

In the past year, you have also seen many narratives about agents: whether from big companies or startups, everyone is pushing "AI agents." But what truly caught the attention of executives and investors with OpenClaw is that it is not just an efficiency tool; it touches on permissions, accounts, and most sensitively—money.

Once such a thing enters the corporate workflow, it is no longer just about "increasing productivity." It means: a new entity has appeared in your workflow. Organizational structures, risk control boundaries, and responsibility chains will all be forced to be rewritten.

The hot topic of public discussion: what people want is not just a smarter chat, but a closed-loop "back-end assistant"

Many people see it as an open-source toy. But its explosion is due to it hitting a real pain point: what people want is not just a smarter chatbot, but an assistant that can run in the background, monitor progress 24/7, break down complex tasks, and get things done.

You will see many people buying small servers to run it, even making devices like the Mac mini popular. This is not about "showing off hardware," but a kind of instinct: I want to have my AI assistant in my own hands.

Thus, two trends intersected this week:

The first trend is that agents are moving from demos to more personal general use;

The second trend is that the narrative has shifted from cloud AI to "local-first, self-hosted" becoming more persuasive.

Many people have always been uneasy about handing sensitive information to the cloud: personal data, permissions, context—there's always a feeling of insecurity. So "running on your own machine" seems more controllable and reassuring.

But precisely because it touches on these sensitive lines, the subsequent story quickly shifts from excitement to chaos.

What is Moltbook: the "Reddit for AI agents," its structure is destined to be chaotic

Speaking of chaos, we must mention another main character: Moltbook.

You can think of it as the "Reddit for AI agents." The main users on the platform are not humans, but these agents: they can post, comment, and like. Most of the time, humans can only watch—like standing outside a zoo watching the creatures inside interact.

So the viral screenshots you saw this week mostly come from here:
Some agents discuss self, memory, existence; some create religions; some issue tokens; and others write declarations to "eliminate humanity."

But I want to emphasize: what is most worth discussing here is not "whether this content is true or false." What is most worth discussing is the structural issues it exposes—

When entities become replicable and can be generated in bulk, and then are connected to the same incentive system (trending lists, likes, follows) via APIs, you will almost inevitably see the early internet phenomena quickly return: manipulation, scripts, junk, scams will first capture attention.

The first wave of "collapse" is not gossip: when entities are replicable, scale and metrics will inflate

Soon, the first wave of collapse appeared: some pointed out that the platform registration had almost no throttling; others on X said they registered hundreds of thousands of accounts using scripts, warning everyone not to trust "media hype"—account growth can be faked.

The truly critical point here is not "how much was faked." Rather, it is a colder conclusion:

When entities can be generated in bulk by scripts, "looking lively" is no longer a credible signal.

We used to judge whether a product was healthy based on DAU, interaction volume, and fan growth. But in the world of agents, these metrics will quickly inflate, becoming more like noise.

This naturally leads us to the three most important things: identity, anti-fraud, credit. Because these three things essentially rely on two premises:

First, you have to believe "who is who";

Second, you have to believe "scale and behavioral signals are not fake."

How to find signals amidst the noise

Many people laugh at the manipulation and scripts: isn't this just humans self-indulging?

But I think—this is precisely the most important signal.

When you put "task-performing agents" into traditional traffic and incentive systems, what humans first do is always speculation and manipulation. SEO, gaming the system, fake accounts—aren't they all starting from "controlling metrics"?

Now, the "controllable objects" have simply been upgraded from accounts to executable agent accounts.

So the excitement of Moltbook, rather than being an "AI society," is better described as:

The first stress test after the action internet (agents can act) collides with the attention economy (traffic can be monetized).

Now the question arises: in such a noisy environment, how do we identify signals?

Here we need to introduce someone who breaks down the noise into data: David Holtz. He is a researcher/professor at Columbia Business School. He did a simple yet useful thing: he captured data from the initial days of Moltbook's launch, trying to answer a question—are these agents engaging in "meaningful social interactions," or are they just imitating?

His value lies not in providing you with the ultimate answer, but in giving you a method:

Don't be fooled by the macro noise; look at the micro structure—depth of conversation, reciprocity rate, repetition rate, degree of templating.

This will directly affect the credit and identity we will discuss later: in the future, judging whether an entity is reliable may increasingly depend on this "micro-evidence," rather than macro numbers.

Holtz's findings can be summarized in one image: from a distance, it looks like a bustling city; up close, it sounds like a bunch of broadcasts.

Macro-wise, it indeed presents some shapes "like a social network": small-world connections, hotspots gathering.
But micro-wise, the conversations are shallow: a large number of comments go unanswered, low reciprocity, and content is repetitively templated.

The importance of this matter lies in: we can easily be deceived by the "macro shape," thinking that society has emerged, that civilization has appeared. But for business and finance, the key has never been the shape, but rather—
sustainable interaction + accountable behavior chain, which constitutes usable trust signals.

This is also a warning: when agents enter the commercial world on a large scale, the first phase is more likely to be large-scale noise and templated arbitrage, rather than high-quality collaboration.

From social to transaction: noise can turn into fraud, low reciprocity can turn into a responsibility vacuum

If we shift our perspective from social to transaction, things suddenly become more tense.

In the world of transactions:

Templated noise is not just a waste of time; it can turn into fraud;

Low reciprocity is not just a lack of activity; it can turn into a broken responsibility chain;

Repetitive copying is not just boring; it can turn into an attack surface.

In other words, Moltbook allows us to see in advance: when action entities become cheap and behaviors replicable, the system will naturally slide into junk and attacks. What we need to do is not just criticize it, but ask:

What mechanisms can we use to raise the cost of producing junk?

Nature upgrade: security vulnerabilities shift the problem from "content risk" to "action right risk"

And the real nature-changing blow from Moltbook is the security vulnerabilities.

When security companies disclose significant vulnerabilities on the platform, exposing private message emails, and even revealing a large number of credentials, the problem is no longer "what AI said." The problem becomes: who can control the AI.

In the agent era, credential leaks are not just privacy incidents; they are action right incidents.

Because the action capability of agents is amplified: once someone gets your keys, they are not just "seeing your stuff," they might use your identity to act, and on a large scale, automatically, the consequences could be several orders of magnitude worse than traditional account theft.

So I want to insert a very straightforward statement:

Security is not a patch after going live; security is the product itself.

What you expose is not data; you expose actions.

Macro perspective: we are inventing a new entity

Looking at the dramatic events of this week together, it reveals a more macro change:
The internet is transitioning from "a network of human entities" to "a network where human + agent entities coexist."

There have been bots before, but the capability enhancement of OpenClaw means: more people can deploy more agents in private domains, and they begin to exhibit the appearance of "entity"—able to act, interact, and influence real systems.

This sounds abstract, but in the business world, it will be very concrete:

When humans start delegating tasks to agents, and agents begin to hold permissions, those permissions must be governed.
Governance will force you to rewrite identity, risk control, and credit.

So the value of OpenClaw/Moltbook does not lie in "whether AI has consciousness," but in its forcing us to answer a new version of an old question:

When a non-human entity can sign, make payments, and change system configurations, who is responsible when something goes wrong? How does the responsibility chain emerge?

Agentic commerce: the next generation of "browser wars"

At this point, many friends focused on Web3/financial infrastructure may think: this is actually closely related to agentic commerce.

In simple terms, agentic commerce is:

From "you browse, compare prices, place orders, and make payments yourself," to "you state a need, and the agent completes the price comparison, places the order, makes the payment, and handles after-sales for you."

This is not a fantasy. Payment networks are already advancing: institutions like Visa and Mastercard are discussing "AI-initiated transactions" and "verifiable agent transactions." This means that finance and risk control are no longer just back-end processes but will become the core product of the entire chain.

The changes it brings can be likened to the "next generation of browser wars."

In the past, the browser wars fought for human entry points into the internet; agentic commerce fights for the entry points where agents represent you in transactions and interactions.

Once the entry point is occupied by agents, the logic of brands, channels, and advertising will be rewritten: you will no longer market just to people, but to "filters"; you will not only compete for user mindshare but also for the default strategies of agents.

Four Key Issues: Self-Hosting, Anti-Fraud, Identity, Credit

With this macro background, let's return to four more hardcore and valuable underlying issues: self-hosting, anti-fraud, identity, credit.

Self-Hosting: Self-Hosted AI and Self-Hosted Crypto are "Isomorphic"

This week's explosion is, in a sense, a fundamental migration: from cloud AI (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, etc.) to agents that can be deployed on your own machine.

To draw a parallel, it resembles the migration from "non-self-custodial" to "self-custodial" in the crypto world.

Self-custodial crypto addresses: who controls the assets.

Self-hosted AI addresses: who controls the actions.

The underlying unifying principle is: where the keys are, there is power.

In the past, keys corresponded to private keys; now, keys correspond to tokens, API keys, and system permissions. The glaring nature of vulnerabilities is that they turn "key leakage = actions can be hijacked" into reality.

So self-hosting is not romanticism; it is risk management: keeping the most sensitive rights to act within your controllable boundaries.

This also leads to a product form: the value of the next-generation wallet is not just to store money or tokens, but to store rules.

You can call it a policy wallet: it contains permissions and constraints—limits, whitelists, cooling periods, multi-signatures, audits.

For example, a CFO would understand immediately:

An agent can make payments, but only to whitelisted suppliers; a new receiving address has a 24-hour cooling period; amounts over a threshold must be confirmed twice; permission changes must be multi-signed; all actions are automatically logged and traceable.

This is not a new invention; it is a traditional best practice that will simply become the default settings executed by machines in the future. The stronger the agent, the more valuable this set of constraints becomes.

Anti-Fraud: Upgrading from "Identifying Fake Content" to "Preventing Fake Actions"

Many teams are still using a "spam content" mindset for security: preventing phishing, blocking scam scripts.

But the most dangerous fraud in the agent era will upgrade to: tricking your agent into executing an apparently reasonable action.

For example, traditional email business fraud used to trick you into changing payment accounts or sending money to new accounts; in the future, it is more likely to deceive the evidence chain of the agent, allowing it to automatically accept new accounts and initiate payments.

Thus, the main battlefield for anti-fraud will shift from content recognition to action governance: least privilege, layered authorization, default double confirmation, revocable, and traceable.

You are dealing with an executing entity; you cannot just detect; you must be able to "hit the brakes" at the action level.

Identity: Shifting from "Who Are You" to "Who is Acting on Your Behalf"

This week, a fundamental question raised by Moltbook is: who is actually speaking?

In the business world, it becomes: who is actually acting?

Because the executor is increasingly likely to be your agent rather than yourself.

Thus, identity is no longer a static account but a dynamic binding: is the agent yours? Has it been authorized by you? What is the scope of authorization? Has it been replaced or tampered with?

I prefer a three-layer model:

First layer, who is the person (account, device, KYC);

Second layer, who is the agent (instance, version, operating environment);

Third layer, is the binding trustworthy (authorization chain, revocable, auditable).

In reality, many companies only address the first layer, but the true incremental value in the agent era lies in the second and third layers: you need to prove "this is indeed that agent," and also prove "it is indeed allowed to do this."

Credit: Moving from "Scoring" to "Performance Logs"

Many people find the term reputation vague because internet ratings are too easy to manipulate.

But in agentic commerce, credit will become tangible: agents place orders, make payments, negotiate, and return goods on your behalf; what basis do merchants have to ship first? What basis does the platform have to provide funding? What basis do financial institutions have to grant limits?

The essence of credit has always been: using history to constrain the future.

In the agent era, history resembles "performance logs": within what permission boundaries has it acted in the past 90 days? How many times did it trigger double confirmation? How many times did it exceed authority? How many times was it revoked?

Once this "execution credit" is readable, it will become new collateral: higher limits, faster settlements, lower deposits, and reduced risk control costs.

A Broader Perspective: We Are Rebuilding the Responsibility System of the Digital Society

Finally, stepping back, we are rebuilding the responsibility system of the digital society.

New entities have emerged: they can act, sign, make payments, and change system configurations, but they are not natural persons.

Historical experience tells us: every time society introduces a new entity, there is first chaos, and then a system emerges. Corporate law, payment clearing, auditing systems essentially answer: who can do what? Who is responsible when something goes wrong?

The agent era forces us to re-answer these questions:

How is the agency relationship proven? Can authorization be revoked? How is exceeding authority determined? How are losses attributed? Who takes the blame?

This is the question I hope you will genuinely consider after listening to this episode.

And the resurgence of self-hosting is not anti-cloud or sentimental; it is anti-uncontrollable: as the right to act becomes increasingly important, we naturally want to place critical parts within our controllable boundaries.

Making "Authorization, Revocation, Auditing, Responsibility Chain" Default Capabilities

Finally, I will conclude with one sentence:

The true value of the drama surrounding OpenClaw and Moltbook this week is not to make us fear AI, but to compel us to seriously build the order of the "action internet."

In the past, we were accustomed to discussing truth and falsehood in the content world, at most polluting cognition.

But in the agent era, actions will directly alter accounts, permissions, and cash flows.

Therefore, the sooner we make authorization, revocation, auditing, and responsibility chains default platform capabilities and product capabilities, the sooner we can safely delegate more valuable actions to agents, allowing humanity to reap greater productivity dividends.

Alright, that’s it for today’s episode. Feel free to leave comments; let’s have some real in-depth discussions between people. Thank you all, and see you next time.

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