Moltbot - originally Clawdbot and later renamed OpenClaw - is an open-source AI agent framework created by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger. It wraps frontier LLMs such as Anthropic's Claude with persistent memory, system access, and 50+ integrations, letting agents scan market inefficiencies, manage crypto wallets, execute trades, generate research, and act on prediction-market venues like Polymarket.
The project leverages ERC-8004, an Ethereum standard launched on mainnet in January 2026 that gives AI agents a verifiable on-chain identity and reputation through NFTs. Combined with secure execution enclaves and on-chain micropayments, this enables trustless autonomous trading agents that can coordinate economically without a platform intermediary.
Moltbot is free to install under the MIT license but typically costs $25-$300 per month in inference and execution depending on workload and integrations. The skill library is community-maintained by BankrBot at github.com/BankrBot/openclaw-skills, and the project hit roughly 80,000 GitHub stars within days of release, making it one of the fastest-growing OSS projects of late 2025.
Unlike VC-backed competitors, Moltbot is not a company - it is a community project. Steinberger announced in February 2026 that he would join OpenAI, with stewardship of the codebase passing to a non-profit foundation so the project remains independent and open source. The name has migrated from Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw over its short history, reflecting trademark friction and branding evolution.