In This Article
Introduction
Names matter in technology. They shape community identity, brand recognition, and — as Peter Steinberger learned in January 2026 — they can trigger legal disputes that force chaotic changes at exactly the wrong moment. OpenClaw went through three names in roughly one week, each transition forced by circumstances outside the creator's control. Understanding this naming journey gives you insight into both the legal complexities of AI development in 2026 and the resilience of the OpenClaw community.
The story begins with a playful reference to an AI model, passes through a biological metaphor for growth, and ends with the clean, professional name the project needed to become an enterprise-grade platform. Along the way, it attracted trademark disputes, crypto scammers, viral chaos, and ultimately a more robust identity than the original name could have provided.
The Clawdbot Origins
When Peter Steinberger built the first version of the project in November 2025, he named it Clawdbot. The name was a portmanteau of "Claude" (Anthropic's AI model that the project was originally built around) and "bot" — straightforward and self-explanatory to anyone familiar with Anthropic's naming conventions. The "d" in "Clawd" was a deliberate stylization, turning the reference into something playful rather than direct.
The lobster became an unofficial mascot almost immediately. The connection between "Clawd" and "Claw" inspired a community of developers who identified with the lobster metaphor — resilient, armored, and capable of regrowth after shedding a shell (molting). The lobster emoji became ubiquitous in the project's Discord and early documentation.
During the initial months, Clawdbot was primarily a developer tool — a clever hack that bridged Anthropic's Claude API with Telegram and WhatsApp. The anthropic connection was celebrated rather than hidden: the whole point was to make Claude more accessible. The name made perfect sense in this context.
The viral moment in late January 2026 changed everything. Suddenly, Clawdbot wasn't a niche developer tool — it was a viral phenomenon with millions of views, tens of thousands of stars, and coverage in mainstream technology media. The project's name was now visible to the entire internet, including Anthropic's legal team.
The Anthropic Trademark Complaint
Anthropic's concern was legitimate. "Clawd" as a stylized variant of "Claude" could reasonably cause consumer confusion — a user unfamiliar with the project might assume Clawdbot was an official Anthropic product, rather than a third-party open-source tool built on Anthropic's API. Trademark law in most jurisdictions protects against this kind of confusion regardless of whether the infringement was intentional.
On January 27, 2026 — at the peak of the project's viral momentum — Anthropic contacted Peter Steinberger requesting that the name be changed. Steinberger has been publicly gracious about the request, acknowledging Anthropic's legitimate interest without characterizing the interaction as hostile. "They were right to flag it," he said in a community post. "I just wish the timing had been different."
The timing was indeed challenging. The project had just been covered by every major technology publication. YouTube tutorials referencing "Clawdbot" had accumulated hundreds of thousands of views. The community Discord was growing by thousands of members daily. The GitHub repository URL was embedded in articles across the internet. Every one of those references would need to be updated or would become outdated.
The relationship between OpenClaw and Anthropic was complicated by another factor: Anthropic reportedly implemented API access restrictions for the project during this period — a move that accelerated Steinberger's openness to OpenAI's subsequent overtures. The full details of these API tensions haven't been publicly documented, but their influence on the trajectory of the project appears significant.
The Moltbot Era
The replacement name needed to be distinctive, memorable, related to the existing "lobster" brand identity, and clear of trademark conflicts across major markets. Steinberger chose Moltbot — a reference to molting, the biological process by which lobsters shed their exoskeleton to grow. The metaphor was apt: the project was itself in a rapid growth phase, shedding its initial constraints to expand into a larger form.
Moltbot lasted three days.
The name, despite its conceptual elegance, suffered from practical problems. "Molt" is an uncommon word in many languages — the first question in any community channel from non-native English speakers was "what does molt mean?" More critically, the name was awkward to say and type repeatedly: "Moltbot" has an unusual consonant cluster that makes it stumble in speech. Early community feedback was mixed at best.
More importantly, as Steinberger began the domain registration and comprehensive trademark search process that should have preceded any name announcement, it became clear that a better option was available. "OpenClaw" emerged from these searches: descriptive, memorable, clearly referencing the project's nature and community identity, and available for domain registration and trademark filing in relevant markets.
The Crypto Hijacking Chaos
The name transitions created a window of vulnerability that bad actors exploited with stunning speed. When the original Clawdbot social media handles were released during the transition to Moltbot, crypto scammers captured them within seconds — a speed that suggests automated monitoring of high-profile account releases.
The scammers used the captured handles to promote a fake $CLAWD token. The token was presented as the "official cryptocurrency of the Clawdbot/OpenClaw ecosystem," implying Steinberger's endorsement and suggesting that holding the token would provide early access or special privileges in the platform. None of this was true.
The token's market cap reached $16 million before Steinberger's public statement — posted across every channel he controlled — that he had no crypto affiliation, no token, and that the $CLAWD project was entirely fraudulent. The market cap collapsed within hours of the statement. Investors who had bought in believing the implied endorsement suffered significant losses.
The episode illustrated something important about the attention economy around viral AI projects in 2026: the combination of authentic community excitement, social media reach, and speculative crypto culture creates an environment where fraudulent projects can achieve significant scale before being debunked. OpenClaw's legal team subsequently took action to reclaim misappropriated social handles and pursue the most egregious fraud cases, but recovering all misused accounts proved impossible given the speed of the initial capture.
The Birth of OpenClaw
Three days after Moltbot, the project became OpenClaw. The name synthesis was straightforward: "Open" for the open-source nature that was fundamental to the project's identity, and "Claw" retaining the lobster imagery that had become central to community culture. "OpenClaw" was also searchable, professional, and distinct from any trademark conflicts.
The transition to OpenClaw was executed more carefully than the Clawdbot-to-Moltbot transition. Domain registrations and social handles were secured before the announcement. A name resolution FAQ was published in advance. The GitHub repository redirect was configured. Community documentation was updated systematically.
The community's reception was positive. While some members expressed fatigue with the constant rebranding, most recognized that OpenClaw was a better name than either predecessor — more professional, more distinctive, and better suited for the enterprise market the project was increasingly targeting. The Claw Crew community identity transferred seamlessly.
OpenClaw also benefited from being a clean break from the Anthropic relationship complications. The new name had no reference to any AI provider's products, supporting the model-agnostic positioning that Steinberger was increasingly emphasizing. This neutrality would prove important as the project expanded to support OpenAI, Google, and local model providers with equal status alongside Anthropic's Claude.
Lessons for Open-Source Projects
The Clawdbot-to-OpenClaw naming journey offers several valuable lessons for open-source developers, particularly those building on top of commercial AI APIs:
Conduct trademark searches before naming anything public. A five-minute search on the USPTO trademark database and its international equivalents could have identified the Clawdbot trademark risk before the name was embedded in tens of thousands of URLs. The cost of a rushed launch far exceeded the cost of a week's additional preparation.
Secure your social handles before announcing a name change. The $CLAWD scam exploited a window between releasing old handles and establishing new ones. The solution is simple: secure all new handles silently before making any public announcement about the name change.
Maintain API provider relationship neutrality. Building a project identity around a specific provider's product name creates dependency and vulnerability. OpenClaw's evolution to a model-agnostic, provider-neutral name was both a legal necessity and a strategic improvement.
Plan for virality in your naming process. Names that work for a 1,000-person developer community may not work for a global platform. "Clawdbot" was perfect for its initial audience. "OpenClaw" was better suited for the global, cross-cultural, enterprise-targeting platform it became.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the project still associated with Anthropic's Claude? OpenClaw supports Claude as one of many model providers, but it has no formal relationship with Anthropic. The trademark dispute did not result in any legal agreement restricting OpenClaw's use of Claude models — only the removal of Claude-referencing naming from the project identity.
Why didn't Anthropic simply partner with OpenClaw instead of requesting a rename? The specific motivations of Anthropic's legal decisions aren't public. From the outside, the combination of a name change request and reported API access tensions suggests that Anthropic was not interested in formalizing the relationship at that time. This decision appears, in retrospect, to have been strategically costly for Anthropic.
What happened to people who invested in the $CLAWD token? The token was entirely fraudulent with no connection to the real OpenClaw project. People who purchased it typically lost their investment when the token's value collapsed. There was no legal recourse through OpenClaw since the project had no involvement in the token's creation or promotion.
Can I still find documentation under the old Clawdbot or Moltbot names? Early tutorials and articles may still reference these names. They're the same project — the technology is identical, only the name changed. Any Clawdbot tutorial from January 2026 is applicable to current OpenClaw deployments with only naming differences.
Wrapping Up
The naming journey from Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw is a microcosm of the challenges facing any technology project that achieves viral growth faster than its governance infrastructure can develop. Legal oversight, brand security, and community communication all lagged behind the explosive momentum of the project's early growth. The result was chaotic but ultimately productive: OpenClaw emerged from the turmoil with a stronger, cleaner identity — and a set of hard-won lessons about building in public during viral moments that the Foundation has applied to every subsequent strategic decision.