Author: CBB
Translation: TechFlow
August 2020.
My brother was teaching IT courses at a university, while I had just finished a 1.5-year contract as a product manager at an insurance company.
At that time, the crypto market had been sluggish for years and was gradually recovering from the COVID crash. We caught a few opportunities on Binance Launchpad, but our total portfolio barely reached $50,000.
That’s when we started hearing about a new protocol called Uniswap. Friends were trading so-called "shitcoins" on it, often making 3-4x returns in just a few hours. We knew nothing about this protocol, but we had a vague feeling it was different from anything before.
A friend mentioned “sniping” to me. He said that when bZx launched its token on Uniswap, a bot made $500,000. It sounded unreal! My brother and I were shocked and eager to know how it was done.
However, my brother knew nothing about Solidity (a smart contract programming language), and we didn’t even really understand how blockchain worked.
First Attempt at Sniping
At the end of August, we were on vacation in Spain with our family. My brother had just started learning Solidity a few days earlier because we wanted to try sniping on Uniswap.
A new token was about to launch: $YMPL. The hype looked pretty good this time. We set up a sniping operating system and invited a few friends to pool funds. After all, we were newbies and didn’t want to take on the risk alone.
We put in 50 ETH (about $20,000 at the time). When $YMPL launched, we managed to grab 8% of the launch supply. Then, I logged into Uniswap and quickly sold within 30 minutes.
The result? 60 ETH (about $30,000). Keep in mind, our entire portfolio had never even reached $50,000 before. We were thrilled, it felt like “money falling from the sky.”
We wanted more.
Two days later, we targeted another new token: $VIDYA. This time, we had more funds from the previous profit and were much more confident after our first success. We put in 165 ETH and made a profit of 159 ETH in 15 minutes. Even better than last time.
Four days later, another sniping opportunity came up. This time we put in 460 ETH and ended up with a profit of 353 ETH, about $135,000. This was our first six-figure profit, and it was done in less than an hour. The feeling was incredible.
Uniswap’s hype soared, trading volumes surged, and more and more crypto degens flooded the market. Everything seemed too easy, but we knew these opportunities wouldn’t last forever. We needed to go further and really understand how sniping worked.
How Sniping Works
To launch a token on Uniswap, the team must add liquidity to a liquidity pool. In our previous snipes, we would wait for the “Add-Liquidity” transaction to appear on the blockchain, then send our buy transaction, but this usually made us one block too late.
However, some competitors could complete their transactions in the same block as the liquidity addition.
After some research, we found that by running an Ethereum node, we could monitor the public mempool and see pending transactions before they were confirmed on-chain.
From September onwards, our sniping strategy became much more efficient:
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Monitor the mempool for pending “Add-Liquidity” transactions.
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Immediately send a buy transaction with the same gas price as the liquidity transaction.
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The goal is to buy in the same block as the liquidity addition.
This method gave us a head start and made our sniping journey much smoother.
A New Era of Sniping on Ethereum
Mid-September 2020.
There hadn’t been a new token launch for ten days, giving us a great opportunity to upgrade our sniping bot. Now, we were ready.
But new challenges came with it. Summer vacation was over, and my brother was still teaching IT at the university. Sometimes, sniping opportunities would arise while he was in class.
Luckily, due to COVID, everything had moved online. When a token launch was imminent, he would tell the students, “Everyone, do your own research for ten minutes.” That’s how he made time to manage sniping.
The next sniping target was $CHADS. We were fully prepared for this, planning to put in 200 ETH. We knew this was a big opportunity because the market hype was off the charts.
My brother and I stayed on a voice call, nerves high and pressure maxed out.
He was the first to see the “Add-Liquidity” transaction on the terminal. When the bot detected it, he said in a serious tone, “Ça part.” (We’re French; this means “It’s starting!”)
This phrase is etched in my memory. Every time before a snipe, he would say it in exactly the same tone, instantly triggering an adrenaline rush.
After hearing it, I started frantically refreshing Etherscan, waiting to see our ETH balance drop to zero—that meant we had successfully sniped in.
We succeeded, 200 ETH in, and the chart went crazy instantly. My job was to manually sell in batches on Uniswap.
The profits from $CHADS were unbelievable. My palms were sweating, my hands shaking, completely immersed, just thinking about selling in batches and locking in as much profit as possible.
In the end, we finished with a profit of 675 ETH (about $270,000). The feeling was unmatched, but the pressure and adrenaline left us exhausted.
No time to rest. Three days later, we targeted $FRONTIER, same process, same pressure. This time, the profit was 800 ETH.
Two days later, $LINA, netted 80 ETH. The next day, $CHARTEX, a wild 700 ETH profit.
In just 6 days, our total profit reached 2,300 ETH (worth millions at the time). Just a month earlier, we had struggled in the crypto market for years, with assets never exceeding $100,000.
On September 18, we got a surprise: Uniswap airdrop. Any address that had interacted with Uniswap was eligible for rewards.
Because we had been doing large-scale testing for weeks, we had a lot of eligible wallet addresses. Each airdrop was worth about $20,000. I still remember my brother checking each wallet one by one, ultimately extracting a six-figure total from them.
Our last snipe of the month was $POLS, the token for Polkastarter, which would later become a legendary Launchpad (GOAT) that year.
Smart Contract and Infrastructure Improvements
It was time to upgrade our sniping bot again.
In the first month of sniping, we set a purchase limit, for example: with X ETH, we wanted to get at least Y tokens. But this system required batch transactions, especially since in most cases, we couldn’t know in advance how much liquidity the team would add.
For example:
If the team only added 20 ETH of liquidity and we tried to buy with 200 ETH, our limit order would likely fail.
My brother designed a new system: for 1 ETH, we wanted to get at least Y tokens, and would buy as much as possible before hitting that limit. We were among the first to implement such a system.
We also encountered another problem: we could never know in advance whether the team would add liquidity with ETH, USDT, or USDC. To solve this, my brother designed a smart contract that could buy regardless of the token pair used for the launch.
During the $CHADS snipe, although we made a killing, we clearly weren’t the fastest snipers. So, we decided to further improve our bot’s speed.
We deployed Ethereum nodes in multiple regions and had them compete for sniping speed on the same transaction. We quickly found that the node in North Virginia was always the fastest.
This convinced us that North Virginia was the best place to run a sniping server. Further research confirmed our hypothesis:
At the time, almost all users traded via MetaMask, which routed every “Add-Liquidity” transaction to Infura’s public RPC endpoint, and Infura’s servers happened to be in North Virginia. Most Ethereum infrastructure was also concentrated in this region.
Therefore, AWS North Virginia became the optimal sniping setup, offering the highest competitiveness and lowest latency.
We also established an efficient sniping process specifically for altcoin sniping:
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Find the target shitcoin: We usually had 10-15 crypto friends looking for hot new coins together. If you were the first to find a target, you could participate in the snipe with a 15% share (and take on the corresponding risk). Some friends made $300,000 to $700,000 in profit by discovering shitcoin snipes.
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Identify the launch DEX: For example, Uniswap, Sushiswap, etc.
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Confirm the launch pair: ETH, USDT, or USDC.
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Find the wallet address responsible for the launch: Done via on-chain analysis.
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Deploy the sniping smart contract: Set parameters, including trade size and purchase limits.
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Sell quickly after launch: Usually within 30 minutes, since most tokens are “shitcoins.”
The Polkastarter Era
From October to early December, the market was almost silent. The pace of new token launches slowed, and we thought the golden age of sniping might be over. We had accumulated a considerable ETH reserve, and just holding it made us feel satisfied—life was good.
However, by December, the altcoin market made a strong comeback. New projects relaunched on Uniswap, and a brand new token launch platform—Polkastarter—made its debut.
Polkastarter’s first token sale was SpiderDAO. Although the purchase limit per wallet was 2.5 ETH, my brother discovered this restriction only existed at the UI level, and could be bypassed by interacting directly with the smart contract. So we sent several large transactions and successfully sniped 50% of the entire sale. At the same time, we sniped at SpiderDAO’s launch. That round, we made $500,000. We were back!
This example perfectly illustrates the state of the crypto ecosystem: most teams were complete “amateurs” with no idea what they were doing. For us, it was a godsend. We found vulnerabilities and acted decisively, maximizing these opportunities.
Meanwhile, some DeFi projects began launching synthetic assets, and we made another $600,000 in profit by arbitraging these projects.
December became a turning point in our journey. My brother decided to quit his university teaching job and devote himself fully to sniping.
By January, we moved to Dubai and officially started living the full-time sniping lifestyle.
Our mindset was simple: as long as there was an opportunity, we’d take it. Even if the profit was “only” $10,000, we’d go for it. We knew very well that this window of opportunity wouldn’t last forever, and we didn’t want to miss any potential gains.
In January, we scored a few more big wins, such as $PAID and $PHOON, making a total of $3 million.
Most of our profits were held in ETH, and ETH’s price was skyrocketing. From $200 when we started sniping, to $1,400 by the end of January, ETH’s value had increased sevenfold in just five months.
Anti-Snipe Measures
Starting in February 2021, we noticed more and more teams designing anti-snipe measures for token launches. People were getting tired of “snipers” (for good reason, haha), so various restrictions were implemented to counter sniping.
First Line of Defense: Purchase Limits
In the first few minutes after a token launch, you could only buy X amount of tokens. To counter this, my brother was the first to design a sniping smart contract with a loop function. In a single transaction (tx), we could buy most of the launch supply. Each loop would buy the maximum allowed amount.
With this smart contract, we maintained control, as most competitors’ sniping tools didn’t have this feature.
One of our biggest advantages was our ability to innovate with smart contracts. Every time a new anti-snipe measure appeared, my brother always found a way to crack it. In fact, we even liked these anti-snipe measures because they reduced competition and worked in our favor.
Second Line of Defense: Per-Wallet Purchase Limits
To counter per-wallet purchase limits, my brother designed a smart contract with a “subordinate” function. The main contract would call a new smart contract for each purchase, bypassing the per-wallet limit.
These innovative features were crucial in the following months, especially during the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) boom, when all kinds of Mooncoins (tokens that pump hard in the short term) emerged. We used these tools to stay ahead in the sniping game.
The Peak of Polkastarter
From February 2021, the golden age of Polkastarter officially began. Every token launched on Polkastarter triggered market frenzy, offering snipers almost seven-figure profit opportunities.
However, competition became fiercer. Although we could still make considerable profits, the number of snipers in the market surged, making things much more tense.
To deal with the intense competition, we designed a new feature called “Suicide Snipe.”
The core idea was simple: we noticed many degens trying to snipe tokens with no buy limits. So, our “Suicide Snipe” feature would send an extra buy transaction (not subject to buy limits) and automatically sell after 4 blocks, directly profiting from subsequent snipers.
While this wasn’t a life-changing strategy, we often made 50 to 150 ETH in profit with it.
As time went on, competition became crazier. A sniper named 0x887 became our biggest rival, with speeds far surpassing anyone else.
To catch up, we spent a lot of time and energy constantly optimizing our sniping bot. We tried customizing Ethereum nodes to minimize sniping latency. We tested and improved day after day, but could never match his speed.
In mid-February 2021, my brother and I moved to Dubai, living in the same apartment building. It was the first time in six years we’d lived in the same city. It felt great, and we threw ourselves into sniping, constantly looking for new opportunities and designing new tools.
Despite the fierce sniping competition on Ethereum, we still made good money, but we also realized this situation wouldn’t last forever.
We heard that the BSC (Binance Smart Chain) ecosystem was performing well, with some tokens doing exceptionally. So, we bought a large amount of $BNB at around $80, since we needed it for sniping anyway.
On February 16, our first snipe on BSC was a shitcoin called $BRY. We knew little about BSC’s sniping rules or competition, but it was a good time to explore.
We put in 200 BNB, sold everything within 30 minutes, and made a profit of 800 BNB, about $80,000. Although this was less than our standard profit on Ethereum, we saw BSC’s potential.
For our second snipe, we chose $MATTER. We put in 75 BNB and sold for 2,100 BNB. Wow! +2,000 BNB profit! Meanwhile, $BNB’s price kept rising, reaching $240 by the end of February. Even more exciting, top sniper 0x887 wasn’t interested in BSC, which was basically “free money” for us. We decided to go all in and seize every opportunity.
March became our most profitable month. On Ethereum, we made millions, and BSC was even crazier. Especially on $KPAD, where we made 8,300 BNB in a single snipe, totaling 15,000 BNB in monthly profit.
I still remember $KPAD—it was our biggest win to date.
At the time, I was sitting in my Dubai apartment, knowing this token launch was highly anticipated and would trigger a market frenzy. I was sweating with nerves, doubting if we could grab enough. When the token launched, BSCscan was lagging badly, but I checked my balance on Pancakeswap and saw a huge amount of $KPAD.
“Holy fuck!” Tunnel vision mode activated! From that moment, I was completely immersed in sniping on my MacBook. Selling just 1% of the tokens we grabbed was already worth a fortune. I was totally focused, hands shaking. In one hour, we made $2 million.
Five days later, a token called $COOK launched on multiple chains. I told my brother we should focus our snipe on HECO, since competition would be much lower there. After the token launched on HECO, we bought in with 550 BNB and successfully bridged to BSC, while others hadn’t unlocked BSC trading yet. We sold at the peak, making 3,000 BNB. What a rush!
By the end of March, $BNB had soared to $300. The BSC crazy season brought us huge wealth, and it was just the beginning.
BSC Infrastructure and Improvements
In early April 2021, the market calmed down a bit. We decided to take the opportunity to relax in the Maldives. However, as soon as we arrived, we heard that several highly anticipated BSC shitcoins were about to launch. We realized we had to prepare in advance.
We decided to test BSC’s transaction speed. At this point, BSC operated differently from Ethereum. On Ethereum, you needed to quickly detect pending “Add Liquidity” transactions and send your own transaction to other nodes as fast as possible.
But on BSC, we discovered a few weeks earlier that transaction ordering within a block was random. When you detected a pending transaction and sent yours, it could be placed before the “Add Liquidity” transaction, causing your transaction to fail.
To deal with this randomness, we set up 10 nodes on AWS (Amazon Web Services) worldwide, each sending 50 transactions, targeting random test transactions for sniping. After 20 rounds of testing, we analyzed the transactions included in the same block as “Add Liquidity” and concluded:
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Best node locations: North Virginia, Frankfurt, sometimes Tokyo.
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Node transaction limits: The first 5-15 transactions sent by each node were most likely to be included in the correct block.
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Server performance impact: The most expensive AWS servers could include more transactions in the correct block.
Based on these test results, we built a BSC infrastructure of 150-200 nodes for the next round of sniping. Each node sent 10 transactions to maximize sniping success.
Running such a large infrastructure, our monthly AWS bill was between $40,000 and $60,000. Despite the high cost, this gave us a huge advantage in the BSC sniping market.
For us, running this massive infrastructure wasn’t easy. My brother had to start each node one by one on 150 terminals. Remember, we had no employees, no one to help—just the two of us doing everything.
However, we had a unique advantage on BSC: extensive Ethereum sniping experience and a willingness to invest heavily in infrastructure. These investments set a high bar for small snipers and further cemented our lead.
The Altcoin Era on BSC
Now, all our attention was focused on BSC. Sometimes there were six snipes a day, and we barely had time to live, just constantly sniping “shitcoins.” Time became our enemy, with most energy spent preparing for the next snipe, leaving no time to optimize our setup.
I remember many snipes, especially $PINKM (Pinkmoon). That time, we sniped with 120 wallets due to purchase limits, making $3 million in just two hours. The next day, I bought an Aventador SV supercar.
In May 2021, two Launchpads on BSC quickly became popular. These platforms allowed anyone to execute token listing transactions. My brother was the first to design and develop a smart contract that could complete both the token listing and purchase in a single transaction.
While this seems normal now, at the time, no one else was doing it. I remember one week when these Launchpads were booming, and we sniped almost every project, making seven-figure profits daily.
Once, I was having dinner with friends at Nammos restaurant when my brother texted me that he was about to snipe a project. When I got home, we had another $1 million in profit.
By the end of May 2021, BSC’s hype began to cool off. We decided to sell most of our holdings when $BNB was around $450.
There were a few more snipes in June, but the market was already quite weak, and sentiment was turning bearish.
The end of the sniping era was actually a relief for us. We were exhausted and really needed a break.
All summer, we planned to travel the world and finally take time to enjoy life.
The EVN Windfall
In August 2021, we were enjoying a leisurely summer, barely involved in crypto, just handling some basics. By chance, we discovered a blacklisted wallet still held $EVN tokens we couldn’t sell.
Incredibly, $EVN’s price was skyrocketing, and the tokens in this wallet were worth about $1 million (not accounting for slippage, just as shown on Etherscan). In fact, we had over 20 wallets on the blacklist.
We decided to try selling a small amount on Uniswap, starting with $200 worth, and it worked! We were surprised: “What’s going on? Maybe we can sell small amounts from each wallet and make a few thousand?”
So, we tried again with $2,000 worth from the same wallet, and it worked again. At this point, we realized this could be a very interesting afternoon.
Next, we decided to go big and sell all the tokens in this wallet at once. This transaction netted us 233 ETH, from an initial investment of just 2.5 ETH.
Adrenaline surged, and we rushed to operate the other blacklisted wallets, selling tokens on Uniswap as quickly as possible. Strangely, some wallets were still blacklisted, while others had been “whitelisted.” We had no idea why, but it didn’t stop us.
After 15 minutes of frantic selling, we moved all the profits to cold wallets. We originally expected to make $2-3 million, but the final result blew us away—$6 million! This windfall just fell into our laps on an ordinary summer afternoon.
That same month, we also sold a large amount of ETH earned from sniping when ETH broke $3,000. We felt it was time to lock in profits and prepare for a future of freedom.
The whole thing remains a mystery—we still don’t know why some blacklisted wallets were “whitelisted.” But without a doubt, this summer became unforgettable thanks to this windfall.
Conclusion
That year was probably the craziest we’ve ever experienced. Starting from just $40,000, knowing almost nothing about how blockchain worked, not even understanding Solidity at all.
In the end, we sniped over 200 altcoins across more than 10 different chains. Being able to experience all this with my brother was an unparalleled privilege and luck.
This year, we went through indescribable emotional ups and the thrill of adrenaline rushes.
Thank you for reading this far.
Wishing you the best of luck on your own journey!
——CBB
