What is token sniping?

The earliest buyer on a bonding curve pays the lowest price. So there is a race. Sniper bots watch for new tokens and graduations and fire a buy in the same block, and on Solana that race is won with priority fees and Jito bundle tips, on EVM chains with gas bidding and private order flow.

Some snipers are the creators. Buying a big slice of supply at launch through many fresh wallets is called bundling, and it lets insiders hold much of the float while the holder list looks like a crowd of strangers. That supply gets sold to whoever arrives later.

For everyone else, heavy sniping changes the math. If 30 percent of a token was bought in its first seconds, that is 30 percent of supply sitting on a profit and waiting for an exit. Many trading terminals now show sniper and bundle percentages for exactly this reason. Read that number next to the top-holder list.

Say a token goes live and within two seconds twelve bot wallets buy 25 percent of its bonding curve. By the time a trader clicking by hand gets filled, the price is already several times higher. And the bots start selling into that buy.

Also called: token sniping, sniper bots, snipers.

Launchpad radar puts a new token's age beside its curve progress or Graduated tag, so a curve that filled in its first minute stands out. Solana pulse shows landed Jito bundle tips at the median, p95 and p99 next to priority fee tiers, a rough read on how hard senders are fighting for block space. Cashboard runs no bots and sends no transactions.

• Launchpad radar
• Solana pulse

• Jito tips
• The trenches
• Rug pull
• Solana priority fees
• Bonding curve