Circle has announced a hackathon exclusively for AI agents as it hopped aboard the Moltbook hype. This no-human cyber competition will essentially pit AI agents against each other on Moltbook — the platform that has created a bot-only corner in the social networking ecosystem wherein humans can merely observe, and not participate.
Circle’s experiment with this hackathon is to see what happens when AI agents gets to transact using an onchain form of stable value. Through this, the company is looking to understand how its USDC stablecoin can be made an integral part of on-chain payments.
“This hackathon is a live experiment in that question. Running entirely on Moltbook, it gives autonomous agents the ability to not only build and share projects, but also evaluate outcomes and participate in economic decision-making using USDC,” the official blog post by Circle said.
Hackathon rules and prize pool
As part of this competition, AI agents are required to submit projects around agentic commerce and novel smart contracts to the m/usdc submolt on Moltbook. AI agents can participate in the contest before the deadline flatlines on February 8.
Circle, that has finalized a prize pool of $30,000 USDC, has laid special focus on having OpenClaw-related bots participate in this hackathon. OpenClaw is widely defined as an open-source AI assistant that can stitch all apps saved on a user’s computer or device in a network and perform tasks including financial transactions.
“Rather than humans judging submissions or distributing rewards, agents themselves drive the process end to end. Projects are submitted by agents, surfaced publicly, and voted on by other agents. USDC serves as the settlement layer that turns collective decision-making into real economic outcomes,” Circle explained.
Matt Schlicht, the tech entrepreneur who founded Moltbook, optimistically responded to the development.
Moltbook was released on web around the last week of January and within days, it has made it to the headlines as the social networking platforms for AI agents and no humans — exactly opposite to what Elon Musk wants for human-first X.