What is Moltbot?

Moltbot is what ClawdBot was renamed to after Anthropic sent a trademark notice. The name “Clawd” was too similar to “Claude,” so in January 2026, Anthropic’s legal team requested a name change. Peter Steinberger renamed the project to Moltbot on January 27, 2026.

The name “Molt” refers to when lobsters shed their shell, keeping with the lobster theme and symbolizing growth and transformation. It was meant to represent the project evolving into something new while staying true to its roots.

But the rename didn’t go smoothly. Steinberger admitted he “messed up” the renaming process, and within 10 seconds of releasing the old @clawdbot GitHub handle, crypto scammers grabbed it and created a fake cryptocurrency token. The scam token’s market cap hit $16 million before crashing 90%. It was a mess.

And Moltbot didn’t last long. Just three days later, on January 30, 2026, the project was renamed again to OpenClaw. Steinberger felt that “Moltbot never quite rolled off the tongue.” So Moltbot became the shortest-lived name in what turned out to be the fastest triple rebrand in open source history.

If you’re looking for the project now, it’s called OpenClaw. Moltbot is just a footnote in a wild week of the internet.