What happens when Silicon Valley's new favorite, Clawdbot, enables local AI agents to "go on-chain"?

In recent weeks, an open-source project called Clawdbot suddenly gained popularity in the Silicon Valley circle. Although it has now been renamed Moltbot, the core concept remains unchanged: to have an AI agent reside permanently on your local computer or server, capable of browsing web pages, clicking buttons, sending messages, and even helping you automate trading.

This kind of “24/7 online AI employee” opens up new possibilities once connected with Web3: is it a productivity tool, or a machine that could potentially move your assets at any moment?

Clawdbot: Executable Intelligent Agent

Unlike cloud-based models like ChatGPT that only support dialogue, Clawdbot’s key features include:

• Self-hosted, open-source: download the code and run it directly on your own machine or VPS, with data defaulting to stay local.
• Multi-channel access: can connect to chat platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, etc. You give commands via chat, and it performs actions behind the scenes—browsing web pages, calling APIs, running scripts.
• Persistent memory: not just “forget after one Q&A,” but capable of remembering your previous instructions, preferences, and context—like a long-term virtual colleague.
• Direct action capability: through browser automation, command line, scripts, etc., it can actually execute tasks—such as clearing emails, booking flights, or running trading strategies.

This means Clawdbot can serve as a long-term digital proxy for task management. What Web3 needs is precisely this kind of “executable intelligent agent.”

Lowering the Barrier to Web3 Participation

Currently, several pain points in Web3 are fundamentally about complexity and persistence, such as cumbersome on-chain operations, overwhelming information noise, and high interaction frequency.

An individual’s attention and operational time are objectively limited. Web3 narratives emphasize “infinite possibilities,” but at the practical level, for individuals, it’s already very limited: you can’t monitor markets 24/7, nor can you be familiar with every protocol without consulting documentation.

By connecting local AI agents like Clawdbot to wallets, block explorers, and DeFi interfaces, it naturally fits these key scenarios:

• 24/7 Monitoring and Alerts: keeping an eye on liquidation thresholds, price ranges, impermanent loss in LP, governance voting deadlines.
• Automated Multi-Chain Repetitive Actions: such as periodic yield reinvestment, cross-chain rebalancing, position adjustments.
• Strategy Implementation: describing strategies in natural language, and having the agent translate them into specific contract calls and transaction paths.

If the past decade was about humans learning to use wallets and contracts directly, the next decade will likely see humans learning to use intelligent agents to assist with wallet and contract operations.

Agents like Clawdbot, running locally, will gradually become key players in solving the “information explosion + execution cost” dilemma in Web3 scenarios.

How to Avoid Risks?

Recently, Clawdbot has experienced incidents of being impersonated to issue tokens or scam tokens under false pretenses, prompting the founder to publicly clarify, “This is a scam.” Security firms also point out that many users do not properly set up servers, exposing proxies to the public internet, which risks API, chat logs, and even execution permissions being misused.

In the Web3 context, a few bottom lines must be clarified—

① Wallet permissions should be extremely restrained; use read-only if possible.

② If signing permissions are necessary, only grant them to “small dedicated wallets,” with strict limits and whitelists.

③ Do not trust “official tokens” or “announcements combined with Web3 memes.” Clawdbot has already been impersonated to issue assets, experiencing classic pump-and-dump curves that rise sharply and then crash 90%, fully exploiting emotional and informational asymmetries.

Moreover, self-hosting does not automatically mean security. If your server isn’t properly protected with firewalls and access controls, you’re essentially exposing an “AI root with command execution” directly to the internet. This isn’t privacy enhancement but a self-made minefield.

Finally, while automated agents combined with Web3 are full of potential, once wallets and signatures are involved, it ceases to be a toy for casual experimentation. It becomes a machine that can move your assets at any moment. How much permission you grant is not a technical detail but a matter of life and death.

More practically, if an agent meant as a “notepad” or “secretary” gets compromised, the leaked data won’t just be a few mnemonic phrases but your entire behavioral history, asset habits, and social connections accumulated over years—effectively digitizing your entire persona and sending it out.

The truly secure approach is to always remember: agents can be assistants, but never custodians. Use read-only permissions whenever possible, set reminders first, and be cautious with any permissions beyond your comfort zone—they deserve careful reconsideration.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. The market carries risks; invest cautiously.