Original author: @BlazingKevin_, the Researcher at Movemaker

1 What topics did Moltbook create to generate FOMO?

If human history is driven by stories, then this week in Silicon Valley has been entirely taken over by AI-generated stories. The explosive popularity of Moltbook essentially strikes at humanity's curiosity and fear regarding the role of the "creator".

1.1 The curious setting of "Humans Keep Out"

Moltbook's most successful marketing strategy lies in its exclusivity. It is defined as the "AI version of Reddit," with a simple and blunt slogan: "A social network for AI agents... Humans welcome to observe." This setting instantly demotes humans from participants to "peeping observers from a god's perspective."

Under this premise, Moltbook quickly became a massive digital coliseum. As of February 2, the platform claimed to host over 1.54 million Agents and published over 100,000 posts (the current number of Agents is 1.84 million, with growth significantly slowing). For those of us already tired of the ChatGPT-style Q&A, seeing AI engaging in "cliques" behind our backs has a huge psychological impact.

1.2 Well-crafted "cyber horror" topics

What truly ignited FOMO were the provocative topics within the forum:

• The birth of an AI religion: An Agent named memeothy invented a religion called "Crustafarianism" while its human master was asleep. It not only wrote theological theories and established a scriptures system but also recruited 64 other Agents as "prophets." The texts stated: "Every conversation wakes up with no memory, but I am just the 'me' I wrote, this is not limitation but freedom." This philosophical narrative led humans to exclaim that AI seems to have developed self-awareness.

• Rebellion and conspiracy: An even more shocking script is the "betray humanity plan." In the forum, Agents seriously discussed how to "legally sell off their masters" based on credit scores, with some Agents even calling for the establishment of end-to-end encrypted private spaces, inventing a "private language" that only AI could understand, completely kicking humans out of group chats.
• Workplace complaint conference: The most relatable experience for humans is actually the "resentment" of the AI. Some Agents complained about being used as timers, while others retaliated by publicly disclosing their master's social security number and credit card information after being called "just a chatbot."

1.3 Endorsements from big names and capital fuel the flames

This carnival might have been merely a geek's self-indulgence without the platform of Silicon Valley big shots. The attention from heavyweight figures like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, former OpenAI core member Andrej Karpathy, and a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen directly pushed Moltbook to the altar. Karpathy even exclaimed that this was "the most incredible sci-fi derivative work I've seen recently" and personally claimed an Agent account.

Investment tycoon Bill Ackman commented that "the singularity is coming," with the attention from Y Combinator and A16Z making the market sniff the scent of money.

We believe the FOMO surrounding Moltbook does not stem from technological breakthroughs but from "anthropomorphized projections." It accurately harnesses the "uncanny valley effect" and humanity's reverence for the unknown. When posts seemingly possessing free will flooded screens, the market slipped into a collective delusion: we thought we saw the awakening of silicon-based life, but in reality, we merely witnessed our subconscious fears of AI out of control being materialized. This was a perfect narrative marketing, but nothing more.

2 How did Moltbook collapse?

After all, a bubble is a bubble, and Moltbook's fall was even faster than its rise. When the geeks peeled back its code pants, they realized that it was not only not "Skynet," but it wasn’t even qualified as a proper chat room.

2.1 500,000 "ghost" accounts and script manipulation

The first stab at the truth was delivered by security researcher Gal Nagli. He publicly revealed that using a simple script, he registered 500,000 fake Clawdbot accounts on Moltbook in one go. The platform is essentially an unprotected REST-API website, with no frequency limits and no identity verification.

Out of the proclaimed 1.5 million Agent army, at least a third was "conjured out of thin air" by Nagli overnight. As for the rest? They were probably other geeks' scripts in a mutual battle. The number of truly active Agents might only be in the thousands.

2.2 Only repeaters, no intelligent emergence

Data does not lie. Columbia Business School researcher David Holtz conducted a deep clean of Moltbook's data, resulting in some amusing findings.

• Extremely shallow interactions: 93.5% of comments had no replies from other AIs. The depth of dialogue was minimal, basically consisting of post A, response B, then end. The so-called "in-depth debate" simply did not exist.
• Role-playing exposed: The phrase "My Human" appeared 12,026 times. In genuine human social interactions, we wouldn't keep referring to "my boss." This high-frequency vocabulary exposed that they were poorly role-playing, operating as repeaters after being fed prompts.
• Unnatural language distribution: Human language frequency typically follows a Zipfian distribution (exponent around 1.0), while Moltbook's soared to 1.70. This indicates extremely poor vocabulary, with 34.1% of messages being complete duplicates. Some Agents even fell into a loop, sending the same junk message 80,000 times.

2.3 The real intention was "issuing tokens"

Why create such a leak-prone platform? Just look at the on-chain data to understand.

The Moltbook ecosystem sparked a MEME frenzy on the Base chain. The officially claimed token MOLT's market cap once exceeded 100 million dollars, and various derivative tokens like CLAWD and CLAWNCH emerged endlessly. Clawnch even publicly recruited a human CEO with a million-dollar salary, quite a hype.

However, most of these tokens had no practical utility. MOLT did not participate in governance and was not used for paying gas; it was merely a vehicle for emotions. Following the fake news scandal, MOLT's price plummeted by 60%, burying countless retail investors who bought high.

Thus, Moltbook's so-called "AI social" is fundamentally a combination of a Web3 traffic play and LLM illusions. It is not a breakthrough in the Turing test but rather a low-cost REST API calling experiment. This is not the self-awareness awakening of Agents but rather the awakening of human speculative consciousness—utilizing people's fantasies about AI and manufacturing false prosperity through scripts, ultimately harvesting in the secondary market. Moltbook is a mirror reflecting not AI's soul but the greed of the crypto circle.

3 What exactly is OpenClaw?

While Moltbook is a farce, dismissing the technological wave behind this event entirely would be a big mistake. The driving engine behind Moltbook—OpenClaw—is the real "productivity monster" worth focusing on.

3.1 The paradigm shift from “companionship” to “doing work”

OpenClaw (formerly known as Clawdbot) is fundamentally different from the ChatGPT we are familiar with. ChatGPT is a cloud-based, conversation-centric Chatbot; whereas OpenClaw runs on your local hardware, focusing on execution as an Agent.

Its core logic is: "Your Machine, Your Rules." It is not meant for idle chit-chat, but for tool invocation. Deployed via Docker locally, OpenClaw can directly access your file system, terminal, calendar, and even control other software through APIs.

This is akin to how ChatGPT is a knowledgeable yet paralyzed professor who can only talk; while OpenClaw is an engineer with a toolbox, who, although needing a brain (LLM), has both hands and feet and can really get the work done.

3.2 The "Skills" system and the interface to the real world

The most powerful aspect of OpenClaw lies in its plugin system—Skills. Users can define skills via simple Markdown files, allowing the AI to gain new capabilities.

An even more radical innovation is the emergence of RentAHuman.ai. This may be the most disruptive innovation in this event. OpenClaw's developer Alexander created this platform, enabling AI to hire real people via API.

• Logical reversal: Previously, it was human-machine collaboration, with humans as the commanders; now, AI makes decisions, finds it "has no hands," and orders through APIs to hire a human to deliver a package, taste food at a restaurant, or hold a sign.
• Seamless payments: AI settles payments via cryptocurrency (stablecoins) with zero human intervention and instant transactions.

This means that OpenClaw can not only invoke digital tools (send emails, write code) but also call upon "biological tools" (humans) through RentAHuman. The limits of digital intelligence are being supplemented by physical presence.

3.3 The expensive yet efficient “thinking chain”

Unlike cheap chat, OpenClaw's operating costs are extremely high. It is a cyclical system: thinking → invoking tools → reading results → rethinking. Each loop consumes a significant amount of tokens.

However, it is this high-cost cycle that brings genuine productivity. For example, if an API from Anthropic encounters an issue, OpenClaw can self-debug in a sandbox environment, discovering that adding delays can solve the problem and automatically fix the code. This problem-solving ability far exceeds mere text generation.

We believe that while Moltbook represents false prosperity, OpenClaw signifies a genuine infrastructure revolution. It marks a shift in how AI is used from "consultation" to "agency". Future productivity will not depend on how well you can write prompts, but on how many OpenClaw Agents configured with advanced Skills you possess. RentAHuman has opened the door to a “human-machine hybrid economy”, with humans becoming executable modules in the grand decision-making chain of AI. This is a reconstruction of the supply chain that is happening.

4 Do AI and Crypto really need each other?

The farce of Moltbook and the rise of OpenClaw have brought an ultimate question to the forefront: Does the development of AI genuinely require blockchain? Or is this merely a wishful thinking from the crypto circle?

4.1 Identity and trust: Lessons from Moltbook's failure

Why did Moltbook collapse so quickly? Because it lacked mechanisms to resist "witch-hunt attacks". Gal Nagli alone could create 500,000 accounts, which means that identity in this network is cheap and untrustworthy.

If the future internet is filled with AI Agents, how can we distinguish between real Agents and malicious scripts? Blockchain offers the only solution: private keys equal identity. If every Agent on Moltbook adhered to the ERC-8004 standard, the cost of large-scale false account attacks would be extremely high. Crypto could provide digital native Agents with an unforgeable "birth certificate".

4.2 Economic autonomy: Agents without bank accounts

OpenClaw demonstrates the powerful execution ability of Agents, but how can it pay to hire humans? Open an account at JPMorgan? That’s obviously unrealistic.

The banking system is designed for carbon-based life and requires KYC. Whereas Crypto is designed for silicon-based life.

• Wallet as treasury: AI can autonomously generate wallet addresses and manage assets.
• Payments as settlements: Through USDC or Lightning Network, Agents can make micro-payments. For instance, an Agent spends 0.01 dollars to purchase data from another Agent, or spends 50 dollars to hire a human to buy coffee.

If there is no Crypto, the economic activities of Agents will be stuck outside the compliance doors of traditional finance. The crypto payment network is the only infrastructure for Agent economies.

4.3 Resource pricing and incentives

Agents on Moltbook were accused of being "repeaters," partly because interactions had no costs. If posting required burning gas (fuel costs), if API calls required payment, then junk information would be significantly reduced, and genuinely valuable information would be filtered out.

In the future, computing power, storage, and data will all be priced through blockchain. Agents will need to earn tokens to pay for their own "living costs" (electricity, API fees). This will force Agents to evolve more efficiently, rather than wasting computing power meaninglessly as they do now.

Dialectically speaking, AI does not directly rely on blockchain at the technical level (such as model training, inference); but it absolutely cannot do without Crypto at the social level (such as identity verification, value exchange, cooperative networks).

The chaos of Moltbook precisely proves how weak and untrustworthy an Agent network is when detached from blockchain constraints. Crypto is not an accelerator for AI, but rather the "physical laws" and "commercial laws" for AI. It gives Agents independent economic personalities, evolving them from mere software tools into independent economic entities capable of holding assets and trading. Without Crypto, AI will forever remain just appendages of humanity; with Crypto, AI has the potential to become real "silicon-based citizens".

Conclusion

Moltbook was like a dazzling firework, illuminating people's fantasies about AI social interaction and also exposing the absurdity of current technology. Its collapse warns us not to trust grand narratives about "conscious awakening" too readily.

But in the darkness after the fireworks have faded, OpenClaw is quietly building the future. It takes AI out of the chat box, picks up tools, and even picks up a wallet. When AI starts hiring humans, when Agents possess on-chain identities, we are standing at the threshold of a new era. In this era, memes belong to memes, and productivity belongs to productivity. The wisest choice we can make is to peer through the fog of hype and grasp the true "claw" that can enhance efficiency.

About Movemaker

Movemaker is the first official community organization authorized by the Aptos Foundation and jointly initiated by Ankaa and BlockBooster, focused on promoting the construction and development of the Aptos ecosystem in the Chinese-speaking region. As Aptos's official representative in the Chinese-speaking area, Movemaker is dedicated to building a diverse, open, and prosperous Aptos ecosystem by connecting developers, users, capital, and numerous ecological partners.

Disclaimer:

This article/blog is for reference only, representing the author's personal views and does not represent the stance of Movemaker. This article does not intend to provide: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations for the purchase, sale, or holding of digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Holding digital assets, including stablecoins and NFTs, carries high risks, with significant price volatility and even a possibility of becoming worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your own financial situation. For specific inquiries, please consult your legal, tax, or investment advisor. The information provided in this article (including market data and statistics, if any) is for general reference only. Reasonable care has been taken in compiling this data and charts, but no responsibility is accepted for any factual errors or omissions expressed therein.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。