clanker's "innovations" were pretty simple imo: - shifting protocol revenue from swaps during a particular time frame to a split fee imposed on a "sunk cost" most forgot about - LP positions. - LP positions own a dominant portion of supply. this makes this fee extremely sticky. Example: the OG clanker position got deployed when we launched the protocol & the token back in oct '24. Since then the share of total $clanker trading fees capture by this 1% fee tier pool has been *extremely* diluted. First, as happens to all successful tokens, other people created new lower fee tier pools. Secondly, many large holders added huge amounts of tokens to the LP to exit positions gradually over time. Third, and most significantly, the Clanker team + Jack took 7% of the supply that I transferred to them in Dec '24 and after clanker was acquired, added these tokens to LP positions. These positions are far more concentrated than the OG 0-infinity position created at launch, and have captured the majority of volume since, diluting the OG positions share of volume and fee revenue. Even still, that OG position continues to capture significant flows, earning me a hundred or more each day from my .4% creator fee on that position. Since oct '24! And when volume increases, this $ amount increases, pretty powerful. This design choice was also significant as it enabled the proliferation of a variety of competing interfaces, and aligned the launchpad protocol itself with the success of individual coins created on Clanker and on any Clanker interface. When I was studying launchpads prior to the creation of clanker, my biggest takeaway was that the revenue model of every single one was optimized to profit from "churn" ie the constant speculation on low mc coins that everyone had come to expect from "fair-launch" coins. I wanted to design a model that enabled us to back the 1% of coins that might last longer than a few hours. so we did, and clanker has earned the vast, vast majority of its revenue from coins that have performed better than most, over longer time frames. this is good imo, you do not want to design systems that benefit from bad outcomes for the users of those systems. there are a few more "innovations" that I was aware of designing the core clanker mechanics, and that people like Lily contributed to updates to those mechanics, maybe I'll write up a longer review of what I think we got right sometime! fun to think about now that I'm deep in the weeds of designing my next protocol