Starting with just $40,000, we eventually targeted over 200 different altcoins across more than 10 different chains.
Author: CBB
Translated by: Deep Tide TechFlow
August 2020.
My brother teaches IT courses at a university, and 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 seized some opportunities on Binance Launchpad, but the total value of our portfolio barely reached $50,000.
It was then that we started hearing about a new protocol called Uniswap. Friends were trading some so-called "Shitcoins" on it and often achieving 3-4 times returns in just a few hours. We had no understanding of this protocol but felt it was different from anything we had encountered 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 find out how it was done.
However, my brother knew nothing about Solidity (a smart contract programming language), and we couldn't even grasp how blockchain truly worked.
First Attempt at Sniping
At the end of August, we were on vacation in Spain with family. My brother had just started learning Solidity a few days prior because we wanted to try sniping on Uniswap.
A new token was about to launch: $YMPL. The hype around it looked promising. We set up a sniping operation system and invited a few friends to pool funds together. After all, we were novices and didn't want to bear the risk alone.
We invested 50 ETH (about $20,000 at the time). After $YMPL launched, we successfully grabbed 8% of the initial supply. Then, I logged into Uniswap and quickly sold within 30 minutes.
How were the profits? 60 ETH (about $30,000). Keep in mind, our entire portfolio was previously under $50,000. This thrilled us; it felt like "money falling from the sky."
We wanted more.
Two days later, we targeted a new token: $VIDYA. This time, we had more funds from the previous profit and were confident after our first successful attempt. We invested 165 ETH and made a profit of 159 ETH in 15 minutes. Even better than last time.
Four days later, another sniping opportunity arose. This time we invested 460 ETH and ultimately made a profit of 353 ETH, about $135,000. This was our first time earning a six-figure profit, and it was completed in less than an hour. The feeling was simply amazing.
The hype around Uniswap skyrocketed, trading volumes surged, and more and more crypto speculators (Crypto Degens) flooded into the market. Everything seemed too easy, but we knew these opportunities wouldn't last long. We needed to dig deeper and understand the actual mechanics of sniping.
Mechanics of Sniping
To launch a token on Uniswap, the team must add liquidity to a liquidity pool. In our previous sniping attempts, we would wait for the "Add-Liquidity" transaction to appear on the blockchain before sending our buy transaction, but this often made us a block slower.
However, some competitors could complete their transactions within the same block as the liquidity addition.
After some research, we discovered that by running an Ethereum node, we could monitor the public mempool and see pending transactions that had not yet been added to the blockchain.
Starting in September, our sniping strategy became more efficient:
Monitor the mempool for pending "Add-Liquidity" transactions.
Immediately send a buy transaction and set the same Gas price as the liquidity transaction.
The goal is to complete the buy operation within the same block as the liquidity addition.
This method allowed us to seize the initiative and made our sniping journey smoother.
A New Era of Sniping on Ethereum
Mid-September 2020.
It had been ten days without a new token launch, giving us a perfect opportunity to upgrade our sniping bot. Now, we were ready.
But new challenges arose. The summer break was over, and my brother was still teaching IT courses at the university. Sometimes, sniping opportunities would appear while he was in class.
Fortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, everything had shifted online. When a token launch was approaching, he would tell his students, "Everyone, research on your own for ten minutes." This was his way of carving out time to manage the sniping.
The next sniping target was $CHADS. We were fully prepared and planned to invest 200 ETH. We knew this opportunity was exceptional because the market hype was off the charts.
My brother and I stayed on a voice call, the tension was palpable, and the pressure was high.
He was the first to see the "Add-Liquidity" transaction on the terminal. When the bot detected this transaction, he said in a serious tone, "Ça part." (We are French, and this means "It's starting!")
This phrase is etched in my memory. Every time before a sniping begins, he would say this in the exact same tone, instantly triggering an adrenaline rush.
Upon hearing this, I frantically started refreshing Etherscan, waiting to see our ETH balance hit zero—this would mean we successfully sniped in.
We succeeded, investing 200 ETH, and the chart went wild. My task was to manually sell in batches on Uniswap.
The profits from $CHADS were unbelievable. My palms were sweating, my hands were shaking, completely immersed in the moment, only thinking about selling in batches and locking in as much profit as possible.
In the end, we wrapped up with a profit of 675 ETH (about $270,000). The feeling was unparalleled, but the high pressure and adrenaline drain left us exhausted.
No time to rest. Three days later, we targeted $FRONTIER, following the same operational process and pressure. This time, the profit was 800 ETH.
Two days later, $LINA, netting 80 ETH. A day later, $CHARTEX, raking in 700 ETH.
In just six days, our total profit reached 2,300 ETH (about several million dollars at the time). A month ago, we had been struggling in the crypto market for years, with assets peaking at just $100,000.
On September 18, we received an unexpected surprise: Uniswap Airdrop. Any address that had interacted with Uniswap would receive a reward.
Since we had been conducting large-scale testing over the past few weeks, we had a significant number of eligible wallet addresses. Each address received an airdrop worth about $20,000. I still remember my brother checking each wallet one by one, ultimately extracting a six-figure total profit from it.
Our last sniping of the month was $POLS, the token of Polkastarter, which would later become a legendary representative of Launchpad (GOAT) later 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 hoped to obtain at least Y amount of tokens. But this system required batch trading, especially since we often 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 hoped to obtain at least Y amount of tokens and would buy as much as possible before reaching this 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 complete purchases regardless of what the token's launch trading pair was.
During the sniping of $CHADS, although we made a fortune, we were clearly not the fastest snipers. Therefore, we decided to further enhance the speed of the bot.
We deployed Ethereum nodes in multiple regions and had them compete for the speed of sniping the same transaction. Soon we found that the node located in Northern Virginia consistently outperformed the others.
This led us to believe that Northern Virginia was the best place to run sniping servers. After further research, our hypothesis was validated:
At that time, almost all users were trading through MetaMask, which routed every "Add-Liquidity" transaction to Infura's public RPC endpoint, and Infura's servers happened to be located in Northern Virginia. Additionally, most Ethereum infrastructure was also concentrated in this area.
Thus, AWS Northern Virginia became the optimal configuration for sniping, offering the highest competitiveness and lowest latency.
We also established an efficient sniping process specifically for targeting altcoins:
Find target Shitcoin: We usually have 10-15 friends in the crypto circle looking for popular new coins together. If you are the first to find the target, you can participate in the sniping with a 15% share (and bear the corresponding risk). Some friends have earned profits ranging from $300,000 to $700,000 by discovering Shitcoin sniping.
Determine the decentralized exchange (DEX) for the launch: For example, Uniswap, Sushiswap, etc.
Confirm the trading pair for the launch: ETH, USDT, or USDC.
Find the wallet address responsible for the launch: Completed through on-chain analysis.
Deploy the sniping smart contract: Set parameters, including trade size and purchase limits.
Quickly sell after launch: Usually completed within 30 minutes, as most tokens are "junk coins."
The Polkastarter Era
From October to early December, the market was almost silent. The pace of new token launches slowed down, and we once thought the golden age of sniping might be over. We had accumulated a considerable ETH reserve, and simply holding it made us feel satisfied, with life going well.
However, by December, the altcoin market made a strong comeback. New projects were launching on Uniswap again, and a brand new token issuance platform—Polkastarter—shone onto the scene.
The first token sale on Polkastarter was SpiderDAO. Although the purchase limit per wallet was 2.5 ETH, my brother discovered that this limitation only existed at the user interface (UI) level, and could be bypassed by directly interacting with the smart contract. So we sent several large transactions and successfully sniped 50% of the total sale. At the same time, we completed the sniping when SpiderDAO launched. In this battle, we made $500,000. We were back!
This example illustrates the current state of the crypto ecosystem well: most teams are completely "amateurs" and have no idea what they are doing. For us, this was a godsend. We identified the loopholes and acted decisively to maximize these opportunities.
Meanwhile, some DeFi projects began launching synthetic assets, and we earned another $600,000 in profits by arbitraging these projects.
December became a turning point in our journey. My brother decided to resign from his university professor position and fully commit to the sniping business.
By January, we moved to Dubai, officially starting our full-time sniping lifestyle.
Our mindset was simple: we would seize any opportunity that arose. Even if the profit was "only" $10,000, we would go for it. We were well aware that such windows of opportunity wouldn't last forever, and we didn't want to miss any potential gains.
In January, we won several impressive battles, such as $PAID and $PHOON, earning a total of $3 million.
Most of our profits were held in ETH, and the price of ETH was skyrocketing. From $200 when we started sniping to $1,400 by the end of January, the value of ETH had increased sevenfold in just five months.
Anti-Sniping Measures
Starting in February 2021, we noticed that more and more teams were designing anti-snipe measures when launching tokens. People were gradually growing weary of "snipers" (with good reason, haha), and began implementing various restrictions in token issuances to combat sniping behavior.
First Line of Defense: Limit Orders
In the first few minutes after a token launch, you could only purchase X amount of tokens. To counter this limitation, my brother was the first to design a sniping smart contract with a looping function. In a single transaction (tx), we could buy up most of the token supply at launch. Each loop would purchase the maximum amount within the limit.
With this smart contract, we successfully took control of the situation, as most competitors' sniping tools did not have this capability.
One of our biggest advantages was the innovative capability of our 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 market competition, which was more favorable for us.
Second Line of Defense: Purchase Limits per Wallet
To address the purchase limit per wallet, my brother designed a smart contract with a "subordinate" function. The main smart contract would call a new smart contract for each purchase, thereby bypassing the wallet restrictions.
These innovative features were crucial in the following months, especially as the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) craze took off, with various Mooncoins (tokens that surge in value in the short term) emerging. We utilized these tools to maintain our lead in the sniping field.
The Peak of Polkastarter
Starting in February 2021, we officially entered the golden age of Polkastarter. Every token issued on Polkastarter could trigger market frenzy, almost providing snipers with seven-figure profit opportunities.
However, competition also intensified. While we could still earn considerable profits, the number of snipers in the market surged, making the situation more tense.
To cope with the fierce competition, we designed a new feature called "Suicide Snipe."
The core idea was very simple: we found that many speculators (degens) were trying to snipe tokens that had no purchase limits. Thus, our "Suicide Snipe" feature would send an additional buy transaction (not subject to purchase limits) and automatically sell after 4 blocks, profiting directly from subsequent snipers.
While this was not a life-changing strategy, we often made profits of 50 to 150 ETH through this method.
As time went on, competition became increasingly insane. A sniper named 0x887 became our biggest rival, with a speed far surpassing others.
To catch up to his speed, we spent a lot of time and energy continuously optimizing our sniping bot. We tried customizing Ethereum nodes to minimize sniping delays. We tested and improved day after day, but we could never match his speed.
In mid-February 2021, my brother and I moved to Dubai, living in the same apartment. This was the first time in six years that we lived in the same city. It felt great; we fully immersed ourselves in sniping, constantly looking for new opportunities and designing and developing new tools.
Despite the fierce competition in Ethereum sniping, we were still able to earn a lot, but we also realized that this situation wouldn't last forever.
We heard that the BSC (Binance Smart Chain) ecosystem was performing well, with some tokens showing outstanding results. So we heavily invested when the price of $BNB was around $80, as we needed it to participate in sniping.
On February 16, our first sniping target on BSC was a shitcoin called $BRY. We knew very little about the sniping rules and competition on BSC, but it was a great time to explore.
We invested 200 BNB and sold all within 30 minutes, making a profit of 800 BNB, equivalent to $80,000. Although this was less than the standard profits on Ethereum, we saw the potential of BSC.
For our second sniping, we chose $MATTER. We invested 75 BNB and sold for 2100 BNB. Oh my god! A profit of +2000 BNB! Meanwhile, the price of $BNB continued to rise, reaching $240 by the end of February. Even more exciting was that top sniper 0x887 was not interested in BSC, which felt like "free money" for us. We decided to go all in and seize every opportunity.
March became our most fruitful month. On Ethereum, we earned millions of dollars, while BSC's performance was even crazier. Especially with $KPAD, we made a single profit of 8300 BNB, totaling 15000 BNB in monthly profits.
I still remember $KPAD; it was our biggest victory to date.
At that time, I was sitting in our Dubai apartment, knowing that this token issuance was highly anticipated and would surely trigger market frenzy. I was so nervous I was sweating, doubting whether we could grab enough shares. When the token launched, BSCscan was a mess, and I checked my balance on Pancakeswap, discovering a large amount of $KPAD.
"Holy fuck!" Tunnel vision activated! From that moment on, I was completely immersed in the sniping operation on my MacBook. Selling just 1% of the tokens we sniped was already worth an astonishing amount. I was fully focused, my hands trembling. Within an hour, we made $2 million.
Five days later, a token called $COOK was launched across multiple chains. I told my brother that we should focus our sniping efforts on the HECO chain, as the competition there would be very low. After the token launched on HECO, we bought in with 550 BNB and successfully bridged to BSC, while others had not yet unlocked trading permissions on BSC. We maximized our sell and made a profit of 3000 BNB. The feeling was incredible!
By the end of March, the price of $BNB had soared to $300. The crazy season on BSC brought us tremendous wealth returns, and this was just the beginning.
BSC Infrastructure and Improvements
In early April 2021, the market was slightly calmer. We decided to take this opportunity to relax in the Maldives. However, just after arriving in the Maldives, we heard that several highly anticipated BSC shitcoins were about to launch. We realized we had to prepare in advance.
We decided to test the trading speed on BSC. At this time, BSC operated differently from Ethereum. On Ethereum, you needed to quickly detect pending "Add Liquidity" transactions and swiftly send your transactions to other nodes.
But on BSC, we discovered weeks ago that the ordering of transactions within a block was random. When you detected a pending transaction and sent your transaction, yours might be placed before the "Add Liquidity," causing it to fail.
To cope with this randomness, we set up 10 nodes on AWS (Amazon Web Services) globally, with each node sending 50 transactions to target random test transactions for sniping. After completing 20 sets of tests, we analyzed the transactions within the same block as "Add Liquidity" and summarized the following conclusions:
Best Node Locations: North Virginia, Frankfurt, and sometimes Tokyo.
Node Transaction Limits: The first 5-15 transactions sent by each node were most likely to be included in the correct block.
Server Performance Impact: The most expensive servers on AWS could include more transactions in the correct block.
Based on these test results, we established a BSC infrastructure consisting of 150-200 nodes for the next round of sniping. Each node sent 10 transactions to maximize the success rate of sniping.
Running such a massive infrastructure resulted in an AWS bill of $40,000 to $60,000 per month. Despite the high costs, this gave us a significant advantage in the BSC sniping market.
For us, running this massive infrastructure was not easy. My brother had to start nodes on 150 terminals one by one. Keep in mind, we had no employees and no one to help; it was just the two of us completing everything.
However, we had a unique advantage on BSC: our rich experience in Ethereum sniping and our willingness to invest heavily in infrastructure. These investments set a high barrier for small snipers, further solidifying our leading position.
The Era of Shitcoins on BSC
Now, all our attention was focused on BSC. Sometimes there were 6 snipes in a day, and we had almost no time to live, only able to continuously snipe "shitcoins." Time became our enemy, and most of our energy was spent preparing for the next sniping, leaving no time to optimize our setup.
I remember many snipes, especially $PINKM (Pinkmoon). That time we sniped through 120 wallets due to the purchase limit, earning $3 million in just 2 hours. The next day, I directly bought an Aventador SV supercar.
In May 2021, two Launchpads on BSC (token issuance platforms) quickly became popular. These platforms allowed anyone to execute token listing trades. 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.
Although this seems ordinary now, at the time, no one was doing it. I remember one week when the hype around these Launchpads was overwhelming; we almost sniped every project, earning seven-figure profits daily.
Once, while having dinner with friends at Nammos restaurant, my brother texted me that he was preparing to snipe a project. By the time I got home, we had made another $1 million in profit.
By the end of May 2021, the hype around BSC began to cool down. We decided to sell off most of our holdings when the price of $BNB was around $450.
There were a few more snipes in June, but the market appeared quite weak, and sentiment began to turn bearish.
The end of this sniping era was, in fact, a relief for us. We were exhausted and really needed a good rest.
Throughout the summer, we planned to travel the world, finally able to stop and enjoy life.
Unexpected Windfall from EVN
In August 2021, we were enjoying a leisurely summer, hardly investing much energy in the crypto space, just handling some basic affairs. By chance, we discovered that a blacklisted wallet still held $EVN tokens that we couldn't sell.
Incredibly, the price of $EVN was skyrocketing, and the tokens in that wallet were valued at about $1 million (not considering slippage, based solely on Etherscan). In fact, we had over 20 wallets that were blacklisted.
We decided to try a small sell on Uniswap, first selling $200 worth of tokens, and surprisingly, it worked! We were astonished, thinking, "What’s going on? Maybe we can do small sells on each wallet and make a few thousand bucks?"
So we continued trying on the same wallet, selling $2000 worth of tokens, and succeeded again. At this point, we began to realize that this could be a very interesting afternoon.
Next, we decided to take a bold step and sell all the tokens in this wallet at once. In this transaction, we actually received 233 ETH, while our initial investment was only 2.5 ETH.
Adrenaline surged as we rushed to operate on other blacklisted wallets, trying to sell tokens on Uniswap as quickly as possible. Strangely, some wallets remained blacklisted while others were "whitelisted." We had no idea why, but that didn’t stop us from continuing our operations.
After 15 minutes of frenzied selling, we transferred all the profits to a cold wallet. Initially, we expected to earn $2-3 million, but the final result shocked us—it was $6 million! This unexpected windfall fell from the sky on an ordinary summer afternoon.
In the same month, we also sold a large amount of ETH earned through sniping when the price of ETH broke $3000. We felt it was time to lock in profits and prepare for a future of freedom.
The occurrence of all this remains a mystery; we still can't figure out why some blacklisted wallets were "whitelisted." But there’s no doubt that this summer became unforgettable because of this unexpected fortune.
Conclusion
That year was perhaps the craziest year we ever experienced. Starting with just $40,000, we knew almost nothing about how blockchain operated, not even understanding Solidity at all.
In the end, we sniped over 200 different shitcoins across more than 10 different chains. Experiencing all of this with my brother was truly an unparalleled luck and privilege.
That year, we went through indescribable emotional ups and downs and the thrill of adrenaline surges.
Thank you for reading this far.
Wishing you good luck on your own journey!
—CBB
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