Clanker founder rejects Rainbow's offer to acquire Base token launchpad

Jack Dishman, founder of token launchpad Clanker, has rejected an acquisition offer from Ethereum wallet provider Rainbow, triggering a heated public exchange on social media.

On Monday, Rainbow published a letter on X announcing a proposal to acquire Clanker, offering 4% of its upcoming RNBW token supply — representing about 20% of the circulating supply at the token generation event. On the same day, Rainbow disclosed plans to launch a native RNBW token in the fourth quarter of this year.

However, Dishman said the team had already turned down Rainbow’s acquisition offer the previous week.

Dishman said earlier talks with Rainbow ended without agreement. "After some discussions, we decided that it wasn’t the right fit and let them know last Thursday. On Friday, Rainbow reached back out threatening to publish a public letter if we didn’t respond," Dishman wrote in a post on X. "After we told them (again) that we wouldn't be going forward with the deal, they published the letter today without our consent."

Rainbow pushed back in another post, saying that releasing the letter was "hardly a threat." The Ethereum wallet project added, "The Clanker community is as much a part of this as you are. Today’s price action shows that they think this is a good deal."

The dispute spilled into the open on X, sparking sharp volatility in Clanker. The price of Clanker spiked 70% from $28 to $48 following the news before settling at $33 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.

Clanker is a token launchpad built on Coinbase's Base blockchain, with additional support for Arbitrum. It deploys ERC-20 tokens on Base and enables users to launch tokens through Farcaster by tagging Clanker or via its website.

The platform has generated about $40 million in cumulative fees, according to the Dune Analytics dashboard. 

Rainbow told The Block in an email that its proposal also included a full airdrop of Clanker's treasury to token holders, along with a fee-switch plan. The company added that it offered "additional consideration" to Clanker equity holders and full employment offers to the entire Clanker team.

"Given what we have seen from Clanker both publicly and during the course of negotiating this transaction, we believe this is the best possible outcome for the Clanker team and holders," said Alex LaPrade, CEO of Rainbow.

Update: The article has been updated to include further proposal details and Rainbow's comments.