Original Title: How We Made +$50M Sniping Shitcoins On DEXs
Original Author: CBB, Crypto KOL
Original Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
Editor's Note: The author CBB is a well-known player active in the DeFi and leveraged trading community, who gained widespread attention for sharing his experience of earning $5 million using a HyperEVM arbitrage bot (see: “Analyzing the HyperEVM Arbitrage Bot: How to Seize a 2-Second Opportunity to Earn $5 Million?”). On October 29, CBB also published a warning about the high leverage risks associated with xUSD under Stream. Today, influenced by the Balancer hack, xUSD indeed significantly de-pegged.
In this article, he recounts his complete journey over the course of a year, from entering the crypto world to achieving $50 million in profits by sniping altcoins on DEXs. The following is the original content:
August 2020. My brother was teaching information technology at university, and I had just finished an 18-month stint as a product manager at an insurance company.
The cryptocurrency industry was emerging from years of stagnation, slowly recovering from the crash triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. We made a few small profits on Binance Launchpad, but the total value of our portfolio barely reached $50,000.
At this time, we started hearing about a new protocol called Uniswap. Friends were trading altcoins on it, often reaping 3-4 times their investment within hours. We had no idea what it was, but our instincts told us it was something special.
A friend mentioned "sniping trades" to me. He said that when the bZx token launched on Uniswap, a bot made $500,000 just by sniping. It was hard to believe. My brother and I were stunned and eager to find out how it was done.
At that time, my brother had no knowledge of the Solidity smart contract language, and we didn't even understand the underlying logic of blockchain.
First Sniping Attempt
In late August, we were on vacation in Spain with our family. To try sniping trades on Uniswap, my brother had just started learning Solidity a few days prior.
A token called YMPL was about to launch, and the market seemed quite hot. We formed a sniping team and brought in a few friends to pool funds—after all, we were still novices and didn't want to bear the risk alone.
We invested 50 ETH (worth about $20,000 at the time). As soon as YMPL launched, we successfully sniped 8% of the initial supply. I logged into Uniswap and sold everything within 30 minutes.
How much did we profit? 60 ETH (about $30,000). Considering our entire portfolio was less than $50,000 at the time, we were ecstatic, feeling that making money was surprisingly easy.
We wanted to earn more.
Two days later, a new sniping target appeared: VIDYA. With the profits from the previous round, we had more funds and felt more confident. We invested 165 ETH and netted 159 ETH in just 15 minutes, even higher than our previous profit.
Four days later, another sniping opportunity arose. We invested 460 ETH and made a profit of 353 ETH, equivalent to $135,000. This was our first time making six-figure profits in under an hour; the feeling was incredible.
Uniswap's popularity exploded, trading volumes surged, and crypto enthusiasts flocked in. We knew that these easy money days wouldn't last long. We had to become more professional and truly understand the underlying logic of sniping trades.
What is the Principle of Sniping Trades?
To issue a token on Uniswap, the project team must first add liquidity to the pool. During our first few snipes, we waited for the "add liquidity" transaction record to be on-chain before sending our buy transaction, which always ended up being one block too late.
However, some competitors managed to have their buy transactions recorded in the same block as the liquidity addition.
After some research, we discovered that by using Ethereum nodes, we could monitor the public mempool and see pending transaction information before they were officially on-chain.
Starting in September, our sniping process changed to:
- Monitor the mempool to catch pending "add liquidity" transactions;
- Immediately send buy transactions, setting the same Gas fee;
- The goal was to have the buy transaction and the add liquidity transaction in the same block, executed one after the other.
A New Era of Sniping on Ethereum
Mid-September 2020.
There were no new tokens launching for ten consecutive days, and this calm period was just right for us to upgrade our bot.
But new challenges arose: the summer was over, and my brother had to continue teaching at the university, sometimes missing sniping opportunities because they coincided with his classes. Fortunately, all classes were online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whenever a token was about to launch, he would tell his students, "You all study for ten minutes." During this break, he could focus on executing the sniping trades.
The next sniping target was CHADS. The market was hotter than ever, and we prepared to invest 200 ETH, determined to succeed.
My brother and I were on a voice call, both nervous and excited, with the pressure building.
He was the first to see the "add liquidity" transaction on the terminal. When the bot detected the signal, he said in a serious tone, "Ça part." (French for "It's starting.")
I will never forget that phrase. From then on, before every sniping attempt, he would say it in the same tone, instantly raising my adrenaline.
As soon as I heard that phrase, I would frantically refresh the Etherscan browser, hoping to see our ETH balance drop to zero—this meant we had successfully entered the market.
We really did buy in, with a position of 200 ETH. The candlestick chart skyrocketed, and my task was to manually sell on Uniswap.
The profit numbers from CHADS were astonishing. I was shaking, sweating profusely, and highly focused, selling batch after batch to lock in as much profit as possible.
In the end, we netted 675 ETH (about $270,000). The feeling was unbelievable, but the immense pressure and adrenaline left us exhausted.
There was no time to rest. Three days later was FRONTIER, with the same operational process, the same tension and excitement, yielding a profit of 800 ETH.
Two days later was CHARTEX, with a profit of 700 ETH.
In just six days, we accumulated a profit of 2,300 ETH, which was simply insane. Just a month ago, we had been struggling in the crypto industry for years, with a maximum total asset of only $100,000.
On September 18, an unexpected surprise arrived: the Uniswap airdrop. All addresses that had interacted with Uniswap were eligible to claim.
Since we had been conducting large-scale testing in the previous weeks, we had accumulated a large number of eligible addresses, each capable of claiming about $20,000. I remember my brother scoured every wallet he could find, ultimately claiming several million dollars.
The last sniping attempt that month was POLS—the platform token of Polkastarter, which later became a top Launchpad later that year.
Smart Contract and Infrastructure Upgrades
It was time to upgrade our bot again.
In the first month of sniping, we set a buy limit: invest X ETH, and at least buy Y amount of tokens. Under this mechanism, we had to execute multiple transactions, especially since we often had no idea how much liquidity the project team would add.
For example: if the project team only added 20 ETH of liquidity, and we tried to buy with 200 ETH, the preset limit would completely fail.
My brother designed a new system: for every 1 ETH invested, at least Y amount of tokens must be bought, and before reaching this limit, we would buy as much as possible. We were the first to implement this mechanism.
Another challenge was that we never knew whether the project team would add liquidity with ETH, USDT, or USDC. My brother designed a smart contract that could automatically buy the target token, regardless of what the trading pair was at launch.
We also worked on improving the speed of our bot. During the CHADS sniping battle, although the profits were substantial, we clearly were not the first snipers to enter after the liquidity was added.
We deployed Ethereum nodes in multiple regions, allowing them to compete against each other for the right to snipe the same transaction. Soon, we found that the node deployed in Northern Virginia was consistently the fastest.
This led us to believe that Northern Virginia was the best location for running sniping servers.
Further research confirmed our hypothesis. At that time, almost all users were trading through MetaMask, which routed all "add liquidity" transactions through Infura's public RPC endpoint, and Infura's servers were located in Northern Virginia. More broadly, most Ethereum infrastructure was concentrated in that area.
Thus, the Amazon Web Services Northern Virginia node proved to be the most competitive and lowest-latency sniping configuration.
We also established a very standardized sniping process for altcoins:
Find sniping targets: usually, 10-15 friends in the crypto circle help us discover new hot altcoins. Whoever finds the target first can participate in the sniping with 15% of the funds (while also bearing the corresponding risk). Some friends have made $300,000 to $700,000 just by discovering sniping targets.
Confirm the decentralized exchanges (Uniswap, Sushiswap, etc.) where the tokens will launch;
Confirm the trading pairs (ETH, USDT, USDC, etc.);
Find the wallet address responsible for the launch (on-chain tracking);
Deploy the sniping smart contract and set parameters: fund size and buy limit;
Immediately sell after launch, usually completed within 30 minutes—because most altcoins are garbage.
The Polkastarter Era
From October to early December, the market was relatively calm. The pace of new token launches slowed, and we even thought the sniping era was coming to an end. Fortunately, we had accumulated a large amount of ETH, and even just holding it was quite pleasant.
But in December, the altcoin market made a comeback. Token issuance on Uniswap became active again, and a new Launchpad quietly emerged: Polkastarter.
Its first sale was for the SpiderDAO project, with a purchase limit of 2.5 ETH per wallet. However, my brother discovered that this limit only applied at the user interface (UI) level, and we could still make large purchases directly through the contract. We sent several large transactions, successfully buying 50% of the total issuance, and sniped at launch. This transaction earned us $500,000, and we were back in the game.
This example fully reflects the current state of the crypto ecosystem. Most project teams are complete novices, having no idea what they are doing. This is a godsend opportunity for us, and of course, we must take full advantage of it.
At that time, some decentralized finance (DeFi) projects began launching synthetic assets, and we earned $600,000 through arbitrage.
December became a turning point in our entrepreneurial journey—my brother decided to resign from his university professor position.
In January of the following year, we moved to Dubai, both fully committed to sniping trades.
Our mindset was simple: as long as there was an opportunity, we would never let it slip away. Even if there was only a "mere" $10,000 profit potential, we would act. We knew this window of opportunity wouldn't last forever and didn't want to miss any chances.
In January, we scored several good profits, such as with PHOON, accumulating $3 million in profits.
Most of these profits were held in ETH, and the price of ETH skyrocketed—from $200 when we started sniping to $1,400 by the end of January, all within just five months.
Counter-Sniping Measures
Starting in February 2021, more and more project teams began implementing counter-sniping measures when launching tokens. People were tired of snipers and started adding anti-sniping mechanisms to token issuances.
The first measure: buy limits. In the first few minutes after a token launches, users can only buy X amount of tokens. My brother was the first to design a sniping smart contract with a looping function, allowing a single transaction to buy most of the initial supply—each loop would buy the limited amount of tokens. With this smart contract, we stood out in the competition, as most competitors did not master this technology.
Innovation in smart contracts was one of our biggest advantages. My brother could always find breakthroughs for sniping, and we actually welcomed counter-sniping measures—they made the competition less fierce.
The second measure: single wallet buy limits. My brother designed a main contract with "sub-smart contracts," where the main contract would call a new sub-contract for each buy transaction.
These features were very practical and played a significant role during the upcoming months of the altcoin frenzy on Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
The Peak of Polkastarter and Intense Competition
Starting in February 2021, we officially entered the Polkastarter era. Every token launched on Polkastarter skyrocketed, and each token was a seven-figure opportunity for snipers.
However, competition became exceptionally fierce. Although we could still make profits, it was becoming increasingly difficult.
We designed a new feature called "suicidal sniping."
The principle was simple: we found that many enthusiastic players did not set any buy limits when sniping. Our "suicidal sniping" feature would send an additional unlimited price buy transaction, then automatically sell four blocks later, harvesting all the snipers who entered after us.
This wasn't a game-changing strategy, but it was easy to earn 50-150 ETH from it.
Later, competition became intense, and a guy named 0x887 was faster than everyone else. We spent countless hours upgrading our bot, trying to customize Ethereum nodes for the fastest sniping speed, testing day after day, but we could never surpass this sniper.
The BSC Frenzy Season
By mid-February 2021, my brother and I moved into the same residence in Dubai—this was so exciting because we hadn't lived in the same city for the past six years. We fully immersed ourselves in sniping trades, constantly looking for new opportunities and ready to design and develop new features.
Although competition on Ethereum had become fierce, we continued sniping, and profits were still coming in, but we knew this situation wouldn't last forever.
We heard that the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem was developing well, with some tokens performing exceptionally. We decided to buy a large amount of BNB, which was priced around $80—after all, we might need it for sniping later.
Our first sniping attempt on BSC was for the altcoin BRY on February 16. We knew nothing about the sniping model and competition on BSC; it was time to find out.
We invested 200 BNB, sold all within 30 minutes, and made a profit of 800 BNB, equivalent to $80,000. Although it wasn't as profitable as on Ethereum, it was still quite good, with promising potential.
Our second BSC sniping target was MATTER: we invested 75 BNB and sold for 2,100 BNB. My goodness, we netted 2,000 BNB! Moreover, the price of BNB was performing strongly, rising to $240 by the end of February. We felt tremendous potential—top sniper 0x887 seemed to be completely ignoring BSC, which was like free money for us. We had to go all out and snipe every target.
March was a bountiful month. Token issuance on Ethereum remained hot, and we made millions of dollars; the BSC market was even crazier, with a total profit of 15,000 BNB throughout March, especially from KPAD, where we made 8,300 BNB.
I vividly remember the KPAD sniping battle; it was our largest single profit to date.
At that time, I was in my apartment in Dubai, knowing that this token was highly anticipated and would surely skyrocket. I was so nervous I was sweating, even doubting whether I could successfully enter.
After the project launched, the BSCscan browser was incredibly laggy. I logged into Pancakeswap and saw a huge amount of KPAD in my wallet—oh my goodness! My focus instantly sharpened; I felt like an obsessed computer nerd, starting to sell in batches. Just selling 1% of my position earned me a significant amount. I was shaking, fully concentrated on executing the sell orders, and made $2 million in profit within an hour.
Five days later, an altcoin called COOK was set to launch on multiple chains. I told my brother that we should focus our sniping efforts on the Huobi Eco Chain (HECO) because the competition there would be minimal. After the token launched on HECO, we invested 550 BNB to buy in, then successfully cross-chain transferred to BSC before the trading pair was unlocked, selling everything for a profit of 3,000 BNB. That feeling was amazing!
By the end of March, the price of BNB had risen to $300.
BSC Infrastructure and Optimization
In early April, the market pace slowed down. We took the opportunity to vacation in the Maldives, but as soon as we landed, we heard that several popular altcoins were about to launch on BSC, and we had to be prepared.
We decided to conduct speed tests on BSC. At that time, the operation mode on BSC was different from Ethereum: on Ethereum, you needed to quickly detect pending add liquidity transactions and then quickly send your transaction to other nodes.
However, we discovered weeks earlier that the transaction ordering within blocks on BSC was random. When you detected a pending transaction and sent a buy transaction, your transaction might be placed before the add liquidity transaction, causing it to fail.
We deployed 10 nodes on Amazon Web Services (AWS) global nodes, with each node sending 50 transactions, attempting to snipe a random test transaction. After completing 20 sets of tests, we analyzed transactions that were in the same block as the add liquidity transactions.
We reached the following conclusions:
- The best-performing nodes were located in Northern Virginia, Frankfurt, and sometimes Tokyo nodes also performed well;
- The first 5-15 transactions sent by a single node were most likely to successfully enter the target block;
- The highest configured servers on Amazon Web Services (AWS) allowed more transactions to successfully enter the target block.
For subsequent sniping trades, we built an infrastructure on BSC consisting of 150-200 nodes, with each node sending 10 transactions.
Running this infrastructure on AWS cost between $40,000 and $60,000 per month.
For my brother, operating this infrastructure was quite a challenge—he had to start nodes one by one on 150 terminals. Keep in mind, we had no employees; everything had to be done by ourselves, just the two of us.
We had a significant advantage on BSC: on one hand, we had rich experience from Ethereum, and on the other hand, we were willing to invest in infrastructure, which set a high barrier for small snipers.
The Memecoin Era on BSC
Now we were fully focused on BSC, sometimes conducting six snipes in a day, with almost no time for normal life, our minds filled with sniping altcoins. We were always racing against time, spending most of our time preparing for new sniping trades, with hardly any time to optimize our equipment.
I remember many sniping experiences, especially the one with PINKM (Pinkmoon)—due to the buy limits, we used 120 wallets to snipe, making a profit of $3 million within two hours. The next day, I bought a Lamborghini Aventador SV.
In May 2021, two Launchpads began to gain popularity on BSC, allowing anyone to execute launch trades. My brother was the first to design and develop a smart contract that could complete both the token launch and buy operation in a single transaction.
This may seem ordinary now, but at the time, no one had done it before. I remember one week when projects on these two Launchpads were exceptionally hot; we nearly sniped all the launched tokens, making seven figures every day for an entire week. One night, while dining with friends at Nammos restaurant, my brother messaged me about sniping a project, and by the time I got home, our profits had increased by another $1 million.
By the end of the month, the market heat on BSC began to cool down, and we decided to sell most of our holdings when the price of BNB was around $450.
There would still be a few sniping opportunities in June, but the overall market felt quite weak.
The end of this sniping era was actually a relief for us—we were exhausted and truly needed a good rest.
Throughout the summer, we traveled around and finally enjoyed life.
An Unexpected Windfall
In August 2021, we were enjoying our summer vacation, not really involved in the cryptocurrency market, just doing some basic operations. By chance, we discovered a blacklisted wallet that still held EVN tokens we hadn't been able to sell before.
At that time, the price of EVN had skyrocketed, and the tokens in this one wallet were worth about $1 million (excluding slippage, as shown on Etherscan)—and we had over 20 blacklisted wallets.
We first tried to sell $200 worth of tokens on Uniswap, and it was successful. We thought, "Wow, maybe we can sell a small amount from each wallet and possibly make a few thousand dollars."
We tried selling again from the same wallet, this time making $2,000. We were stunned, feeling that this afternoon might bring great rewards.
Then we tried again, this time selling all the tokens in that wallet: we ultimately received 233 ETH (which initially cost us only 2.5 ETH).
Adrenaline surged, and we quickly checked all the blacklisted wallets to sell on Uniswap as soon as possible. Some wallets were still blacklisted, while others had lifted the restrictions—we had no idea why. We sold frantically, watching millions of dollars flow in, it felt like printing money.
For 15 consecutive minutes, we desperately sold all the tokens we could find, then transferred all the funds to a cold wallet. Initially, we expected to make $2-3 million, but that summer afternoon, we made a windfall of $6 million.
Even now, we have no idea what happened or why those wallets were unblocked.
That month, when the price of ETH broke $3,000, we sold a large amount of ETH earned through sniping—we felt it was time to lock in profits and achieve financial freedom.
Conclusion
That year was perhaps the craziest year we have ever had. We started with only $40,000 in capital, completely ignorant of the underlying logic of blockchain, and had no knowledge of Solidity.
In the end, we sniped over 200 different altcoins across more than 10 different chains. It was a great honor to experience all of this with my brother.
The emotional ups and downs and thrilling experiences are almost indescribable.
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