The most popular open-source project in history almost became a "trophy" in the cryptocurrency world.

Author: Nancy, PANews

A dark horse has emerged in the open-source world. In just three months, OpenClaw has become the most popular and fastest-growing open-source project in history, and a new favorite among developers.

This AI tsunami, sparked by Peter Steinberger, not only propelled him to the top of the AI ​​world but also garnered him a large following of "Lobster followers." However, this highly sought-after "Lobster Godfather" has a strong aversion to the cryptocurrency world and has repeatedly launched public attacks. This stance has undoubtedly brought more negative publicity to cryptocurrencies.

Topping the GitHub star list, the project urgently needs to be de-listed and encrypted.

Undoubtedly, AI has become the golden narrative for the collective migration of capital and talent. Its rapid rise has led many to see AI as the hope for revitalizing the crypto industry, and it has become a new opportunity for many in the circle to gain attention or seek investment.

Especially OpenClaw, which has been gaining momentum recently. According to the latest data, OpenClaw has surpassed 250,000 stars on GitHub, surpassing Linux and React to become one of the most popular open source projects, and setting a record for the fastest growth in open source history.

As "lobster farming" becomes a global phenomenon, tutorials, monetization case studies, and user experiences surrounding OpenClaw are constantly emerging. Some people are even making a profit by providing on-site installation services for OpenClaw. From independent developers to large companies, and then to offline services, the business of "openClaw vendors" is booming.

The crypto market naturally wouldn't miss this hot topic. Recently, Venice, an AI project on the Base blockchain, became the provider of recommendation models for OpenClaw, and the only crypto-native project. Fueled by the popularity of this top-tier AI project, Venice's token surged, with its market capitalization briefly exceeding $900 million. This news quickly attracted the attention and widespread sharing among crypto professionals.

Venice is described as a generative AI project that focuses on privacy protection and no content censorship. It integrates various open-source models at its core and was founded in 2024 by Erik Voorhees, the founder of Crypto OG and ShapeShift. It has recently gained attention due to the Agent privacy trend.

However, Steinberger clearly did not agree with this kind of hype. He immediately clarified publicly, "This was an oversight in a previous document, and we hope to remain neutral on this matter." At the same time, OpenClaw subsequently removed the relevant recommendations.

In other words, OpenClaw's "avoidance of conflict of interest" is not about denying or belittling the actual value and technological advantages of the Venice project, but rather about proactively removing the "officially recommended" label, which could lead to over-interpretation, to avoid unnecessary narrative manipulation and speculation of vested interests. Especially as an open-source agent framework, and with its founder having joined OpenAI, OpenClaw needs to maintain technological neutrality and avoid any suspicion of conflict of interest.

I chose to sever ties due to the crypto "trolling" incident, and even considered abandoning the project.

Unlike AI leaders such as OpenAI founder Sam Altman and xAI co-founder Elon Musk, who hold positive or even open attitudes toward crypto, Steinberger adopts a "don't bother me if you're not a fan" stance. This avoidance has inevitably caused the cryptocurrency community to "break down."

In fact, Steinberge, who has no interest in crypto, is very averse to the "hype" phenomenon in the crypto community. Since last year, he has issued dozens of public statements expressing his strong dissatisfaction with the crypto speculative culture, and even bluntly stating "don't get involved."

Especially after OpenClaw gained popularity. In January of this year, OpenClaw's popularity soared, but due to a trademark dispute with Anthropic's AI model Claude caused by its original name Clawdbot, it received a cease and desist notice from its legal team. Subsequently, Steinberger changed the name twice, finally settling on OpenClaw as the project name.

However, this name change controversy was met with a rush of registrations and speculation by cryptocurrency speculators.

During the renaming process, snipers used automated scripts to quickly hijack accounts, impersonate the official entity, and take the opportunity to issue fake tokens, such as CLAWD. The market value of some tokens once soared to tens of millions of dollars, attracting a large number of investors.

Faced with market speculation, Steinberger quickly issued a public statement declaring that he would never issue tokens and emphasizing that any project issuing tokens in his name was a scam. This move caused the prices of these tokens to plummet, resulting in significant losses for many retail investors.

If the crypto fiasco only annoyed Steinberger, then the damage to the community ecosystem angered him.

As OpenClaw continues to gain popularity, a large number of crypto enthusiasts have flocked to related communities. Some radicals have even maliciously submitted code and sent abusive private messages, demanding that Steinberger claim the transaction fees or encrypt the project.

As a result, the official OpenClaw Discord server has begun to completely ban mentions of keywords such as Bitcoin and Crypto, even in neutral technical discussions. Some users have been removed for citing Bitcoin block heights as benchmarks.

“I underestimated this group,” Steinberger bluntly stated in a recent interview, pointing out a very peculiar subculture within the crypto community that rapidly tokenizes anything trendy. However, having already achieved financial freedom, he has no intention of supporting this kind of (crypto) stuff. The crypto noise makes it almost impossible for him to see any genuine project discussions, and the associated speculation is harming projects.

It was precisely because of the "harassment" from the crypto community that this brilliant developer admitted that he even considered abandoning the entire project at one point, as he very much did not want the project to become a tool for crypto hype.

Just recently, Steinberger publicly advised young people "not to waste time on cryptocurrencies," a statement that further revealed his dissatisfaction with the crypto industry.

This unexpected clash between the open-source community and the cryptocurrency world is not merely a self-preservation tactic of a blockbuster project, but also reflects the irreconcilable contradiction between technological purity and capital speculation in the current AI wave.