The Rise of Anti-Sniping Software in Memecoin Trading

As the practice of sniping gains notoriety among memecoin traders, various kinds of anti-sniping software have advertised safeguards as a way to attract buyers.

Last week, memecoin BadCoin (BADAI) showcased the anti-sniping capabilities of Gra.fun, claiming it would help the launch stand out. Unfortunately, the nascent software categorized even regular traders as snipers and disallowed their selling privileges, resulting in a crash for those unable to exit the project in time.

Sniping, originally a Wall Street term for brokers executing orders at advantageous prices before their competitors, conjured images of precise marksmen targeting their foes. Over time, high-frequency trading firms escalated the speed of sniping to microsecond competitions, striving for proximity to exchange servers to exploit fiber-optic latency differentials.

BadCoin’s Anti-Sniping Promises

Crypto adapted this terminology, with memecoin markets discussing sniping in seconds or minutes. Here, snipers are seen as sophisticated traders exploiting social media and token launch platforms to discover celebrity token launches at their precise moment of creation. These memecoin snipers often secure a contract address and buy in massively only to sell shortly after to less informed buyers.

BadCoin’s founder, Mike Sarvodaya, and his community aimed to evade the front-running snipers of Solana memecoins. Their launch was on a distinct blockchain via Binance, attempting to distance from the scam-ridden Pump.fun. However, these strategies did not yield better outcomes.

The memecoin’s price on Gra.fun initially spiked to an all-time high in just five minutes, quickly followed by a decline. When the token transitioned from Gra.fun to Pancakeswap, a similar spike occurred, but the price crashed thereafter. A dual listing on Gate.io mirrored this trend, spiking around five minutes post-launch before crashing.

BNB Chain’s Involvement

Gra.fun operates on BNB Chain, which tweeted about BADAI’s launch but denied any commercial or investment ties with the coin, urging improvements from Gra.fun and BadCoin.

Gra.fun acknowledged its own flaws in an X post, admitting that integration issues blocked legitimate sellers. Filters inadvertently blacklisted users interacting with associated liquidity pools. The Gra.fun team pledged to manually investigate each affected address.

Protos reached out to BadCoin for comments but has yet to receive a response.