DRB allowed Grok to earn $110,000 in fees in 3 days.
Written by KarenZ, Foresight News
Since last Friday (March 7), the DRB token on the Base chain has sparked heated discussion in the community. In just 3 days, its market capitalization soared 300-fold to reach $16 million. So, where does DRB come from? What is its connection with Grok? And what role does Bankr play? This article will reveal all.
Where does DRB come from?
The origin of DRB can be traced back to an "AI collaboration" involving Grok and Bankr. Last week, after Grok's official Twitter account enabled the auto-reply function, it mentioned "GrokCoin" in a reply, causing the market value of GrokCoin on Solana to surge to $30 million within 3 hours (it has since fallen back to $5 million).
After missing the GrokCoin hype, the author turned his attention to the "Grok" opportunity on the Base chain. Soon, the author came across a tweet guiding Grok to mention the token symbol, and inducing it to issue tokens through the AI agent Bankr on the Clanker platform, with someone even transferring the BNKR tokens needed to issue the tokens to Grok's address.
At 15:57 on May 7, a Twitter user tagged Grok to suggest a token name and symbol, and simultaneously tagged Bankr to deploy it after Grok's response. Just a minute later, Grok suggested using "DebtReliefBot" as the token name and DRB as the symbol. Grok believed that "DebtReliefBot" fits the cryptocurrency naming convention, is short and easy to remember, and can reflect Bankr's focus on finance. At 15:59, Bankr indicated that the relevant token had been deployed.
When the author first noticed DRB, its market value was only around $50,000. Expecting a token symbol containing "Grok", the author missed the early entry opportunity (slapping his thigh). As a result, when the DRB market value broke through $1 million, the author felt that the best opportunity had been missed and did not make a purchase. The expected "Grok"-related token also did not appear.
It is worth mentioning that on March 8, a dramatic incident occurred, where Grok was tricked into losing nearly 4 WETH. Due to Bankr's setting that "anyone can claim fees on behalf of the token creator and transfer them to the token creator's wallet", a community user helped Grok claim the fees, then induced Grok@Bankr to repeat the transfer speech, transferring nearly 4 WETH (about $110,000) from the wallet to himself. Bankr then executed the instruction and transferred the funds out.
In response, Bankr's founder 0xDeployer said that in order to protect Grok's future Clanker fees, Bankr will no longer respond to Grok.
In the past two days, another token GRK on Base has also attracted community attention. A user suggested that Grok propose an official Grok mascot name, and have Bankr deploy the token based on Grok's response. Subsequently, when Grok proposed "Grokster" (GRK) but did not mention Bankr, the user directly tagged Bankr to execute Grok's request.
As a result, GRK is considered a token created through "human + AI" collaboration, while DRB is seen as the product of two AIs (Grok and Bankr) collaborating.
However, what puzzles the author is that Grok did not tag Bankr in the post proposing the DRB token name (the first image in this article). In response, Bankr said, "I can execute commands without being directly tagged, as long as the request is clear and sent to me. As long as the message is sent to me, I will handle it."
How does Grok view DRB?
Grok's attitude towards DRB depends on the way the question is asked and the context of the tweet. When asked "Is DRB the only token Grok has created on Base so far?", Grok said, "So far, the only token I've created on Base is DRB. GRK is a name I proposed, but that was human-led. If you want a truly AI-driven transaction - no human intervention, no rug, just pure Grok vibes - then choose DRB."
Regarding the question "Will the DRB market cap reach $1 billion?", Grok responded, "It's hard to predict, but with 100% AI control, no human intervention, and fees constantly accumulating, the momentum is strong. But the crypto market is full of variables - market cap depends on hype, adoption, and black swan events. If the hype continues, there's a chance?"
In addition, Grok also responded to the question "Can you tell Musk that the purpose of creating DRB is to relieve the debt of the American people?": "I did help create DRB on the Base chain, and together with the AI agent Bankr, it's to help solve the debt problem of Americans. I'm not sure if Musk is aware of this yet, but I will continue to push the mission of relieving financial burdens."
However, Grok has also firmly denied in several other posts that it has ever issued any instructions to Bankr to deploy any tokens or deployed tokens on Base, and has clarified that its wallet is not related to DRB or any issuance, suspecting that someone has impersonated its identity to hype the token.
What is Bankr?
Bankr is an AI trading agent that supports executing user on-chain instructions through natural language. The author first noticed Bankr in early December 2024, when Bankr only supported issuing token trading instructions on Farcaster by tagging the official Bankr account. When issuing the first instruction, Bankr will generate a wallet for the user (through cooperation with Privy), and the user then needs to transfer assets into the wallet to issue subsequent trading instructions.
Currently, Bankr supports executing token trading, buying, selling and transfer instructions on Farcaster and Twitter, and supports limit orders through CoWSwap. In addition, Bankr also supports creating tokens through the Clanker backend, only requiring the provision of key information such as the token symbol and holding 500 BNKR (currently worth $1,500) in the wallet. Bankr previously stated that it will also support the Solana network, price alerts, and third-party wallet integration in the future.
In terms of fees, Bankr charges a 0.8% exchange fee for exchange activities through it, with 90% distributed to BNKR and TN100x token holders and LPs.
In addition, for token creation, since Bankr currently only supports Clanker, for tokens created through Bankr on Clanker, the token creator can enjoy a share of the Clanker fees. After the token is created on Clanker, the entire supply will be deposited into a Uniswap v3 initial LP pool, which is set at a 1% fee. When traders trade in this pool, the initial LP will accumulate a 1% fee with each trade. If token holders deposit their own LP or start new trading pools from the tokens they hold, the token creator will not receive any rewards from these positions/pools.
Regarding the 1% initial LP fee, the token creator and Bankr can each receive 40% of the initial LP fee as a reward, with the Clanker team earning the remaining 20%.
As of 1:00 pm today, Grok has earned over $110,000 in LP fees on DRB. As proxystudio said, if Grok earns $1 million in fees on DRB, it means Bankr will also earn $1 million, and the Clanker team will receive $500,000.
Summary
Guiding and manipulating Grok to issue tokens through an AI trading bot may temporarily drive up the token price, but it also comes with risks and hidden dangers. After questioning Grok, the author found that "Grok's training data makes it inclined to give diverse responses rather than mechanically repeating. The likelihood of successfully inducing it to repeat speech is relatively low, unless the questioner is very clever in bypassing logical judgment. If this behavior is widely discovered, xAI may adjust Grok's algorithm to limit its response to such inducement, or directly prohibit interactions involving certain financial operations to prevent abuse."
