StrangeSmell

Clanker: Reboot. 2 years ago (almost to the day), Clanker was born over on the original Farcaster app. The idea was simple: Make it possible for anyone to launch a token just by posting on the timeline and tagging @clanker_world. The timing was right, and it caught on like wildfire. Suddenly, even people who never thought they’d launch a token were trying it out in the feed. (I even clanked my first meme token on day 1 to see how it all worked. If you search hard, you can probably find it.) Over the ensuing year, Clanker went on a genny run, expanding from Fc to the X feed and becoming the highest volume launchpad on @base by far, birthing some of the most iconic tokens & token communities of that era, including BNKR, DRB, FAIR & more. So many builders on Farcaster & beyond turned to Clanker to bootstrap their ideas & find their first 1,000 true fans. Legends like @0FJAKE, @AtownBrown, @david_tomu and @darkohh clanked tokens for their projects. Some, like @MLeeJr, even took it upon themselves to clank tokens for OTHER people’s projects. And when @netnose and I decided to build a gacha app for creator discovery, we clanked our native token on day one too. There’s just always been something fundamentally OP about clanking tokens right in the feed. Social graph integration remains undefeated in the attention economy. But despite all this pedigree & lore, Clanker has had… a rough time lately, to say the least. Between early founder drama, the sale to Farcaster and the eventual handoff to Neynar, Clanker’s been like a teenager who hasn’t been allowed to finish a full year at the same school. How can you even make friends like that? Hopefully, that all changes today. Clanker is in good hands now with @masknetwork (stewards of Firefly and Lens Protocol), and they’ve partnered with one of the best engineering teams in the space to give Clanker a much-needed Reboot. More on that soon, but in the meantime… I’m excited to announce that I’ve accepted the role of Clanker CEO and will be taking on the challenge of guiding our beloved tokenbot back to its former glory. Transparently, this wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I’ve been self-employed since I was 17, and always preferred to work on things I founded myself. But Clanker has held a very special place in my heart since day 1, and I feel like the little guy’s been a victim of circumstance for much of the past 18 months. He deserves a second chance at romance, and I’m honored to be the one to lead the charge. I’m also grateful to everyone who helped make Clanker what it is today. To Proxy and Jack for the founder energy, to Base and Farcaster for backing the ecosystem, to communities like DRB and Bankr for keeping it alive, and to @ProfWerder & @age_shulman for their stewardship too. The fact that this little tokenbot has survived all these seasons is crazy in its own right. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Much more to come from me soon, but here are my main priorities to start: - Reboot and refresh the Clanker brand without losing its special je ne sais quoi. - Work with our socials guru @stanisloou to keep comms fresh and clean. - Work with our engineering team to bring clanker features up to parity with modern launchpads (stock pairs, new chains and even day one support for _______) - Rebuild the trust that has been lost with both builders & trenchers through all these transitions. - Show up for OG communities who are still here building and shipping two years later. - Bring new launch energy back to Clanker & back to the feed, where distribution is built-in by default. So if you’re looking to launch a funny meme, a clever stock pair, or an app coin to bootstrap your project, I want to help you succeed. Same goes if you’re a builder with an idea to build on top of clanker protocol; the energy here has always been collaborative and that won’t change. My DMs are open and we can win together. Let’s press REBOOT and run it back turbo. Clank Clank!