ClawHosters
by Daniel Samer
3 min read
OpenClaw is now the most-starred software project on GitHub. On March 2, 2026, it crossed 247,191 stars and passed React's 243,438, ending React's roughly 13-year run at the top. By March 3, the count sat at 250,829 stars with 48,274 forks.
To put that in perspective: the Linux kernel has around 195,000 stars after 30+ years on the platform. Kubernetes sits at about 120,000 after nearly a decade. OpenClaw accumulated 190,000 of its stars in the first 14 days of viral growth back in January.
That's not a typo. Two weeks.
From Clawdbot to Most-Starred
The project started as Clawdbot in November 2025. It was renamed to OpenClaw in January 2026, and that's when things got wild. Stars poured in at a rate nobody anticipated. Before passing React, OpenClaw had already overtaken the Linux kernel at around 218,000 stars to claim the 14th spot overall.
Today the project has roughly 1,000 contributors (the community calls them "Clawtributors"), 13,729 skills published on ClawHub, and over 2 million weekly visitors. Creator Peter Steinberger joined OpenAI in February 2026, which probably tells you something about the project's trajectory.
The Security Side Nobody Wants to Talk About
Popularity brings attention. Not all of it welcome.
The New Stack reported that the growth surge has created real security concerns. Researchers found 30,000+ exposed instances running without proper hardening. The ClawHavoc campaign planted 341 malicious skills on ClawHub. And CVE-2026-25253 (CVSS 8.8) was patched on January 30, just days after the star explosion began.
More users means a bigger ecosystem, but it also means a bigger target. If you're running OpenClaw, security isn't optional anymore. We wrote a full security hardening guide that covers the basics and then some.
What This Means for You
If you're self-hosting OpenClaw, the growth is both good news and a wake-up call. More contributors means faster development and more skills. But exposed instances and malicious packages mean you need to stay current on patches and be careful about which skills you install.
For anyone considering managed hosting, this is exactly why it exists. We handle updates, security patches, and monitoring so you don't have to track every CVE yourself.
The star count will probably keep climbing. Whether OpenClaw holds the top spot for 13 years like React did, who knows. But right now, the momentum is real.
