From the "disaster" of Clanker's first round of pre-sale: How can token issuance platforms design a fairer auction mechanism?

【CryptoWorld】Farcaster ecosystem active figure Linda Xie (former Scalar Capital co-founder) recently shared an interesting development on social media — the token issuance platform Clanker is brewing a new presale framework, tentatively called Clanker Auctions. The design concept of this plan is quite intriguing, aiming to be built based on a mainstream DEX’s CCA auction protocol, while integrating liquidity management and token allocation logic into smart contracts.

This news comes with a rather painful background. Earlier this month, the Clanker platform conducted its first token sale, which ended in a major crash. The community directly described it as a “disaster.” Where did the problem lie? The presale contract still used an old version, with a very low hard cap of only 20 ETH. As a result, a large whale sniped 16 ETH of it, occupying 80% of the entire presale share. One person took the vast majority of the allocation, leaving other participants with almost nothing.

Even more ironic is that this contract had no restrictions on the participation amount per wallet. This led to a classic problem — oligopoly. As long as one has enough funds and speed, they can swallow the entire presale. Ordinary community members wanting to participate? Basically no chance. This design flaw turned what should have been a democratic token distribution into a whale playground.

Now, Clanker is planning the new Auctions scheme, seemingly learning from the lessons and aiming to protect small investors’ rights through a more robust auction protocol and contract rules. This iterative approach is worth paying attention to — after all, the fairness of token presales has become one of the key factors determining whether Web3 projects can earn community trust.