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IntermediateLesson 4 of 7 · 3 min read

How sniping works and why snipers matter

Who buys a coin in its first second, how they do it, and why their bags decide what happens to yours.

On this page
  1. How snipers do it
  2. Why snipers matter to you
  3. Snipers working for the dev
  4. How to read snipers on a coin
  5. Quiz
A new coin springs out of a launch hatch and a fast robot grabs it in the same instant, while the explorer arrives far behind.
Snipers buy in the first moments a coin exists, then sell to whoever comes next.

A sniper is a wallet that buys a new coin in the first moments it exists, usually in the same block it is created or the next few. On Solana a block lasts well under half a second, so this is not a person clicking fast. It is a bot.

How snipers do it

  • They watch. Sniper bots listen to the chain for new coins the instant they are created on launchpads like pump.fun.
  • They filter. Some buy almost everything. Others only buy coins from a creator with a certain history, a certain name, or a link to a famous account.
  • They pay to be first. They attach priority fees or tips so their buy lands as close to the launch as possible.
  • They sell fast. Most snipers are not holders. They plan to sell to the people who arrive after them.
A sniper's timelineA price line over four phases after a launch. In block zero, the very first moment, snipers buy. In the next seconds early buyers arrive. Over the next minutes the crowd piles in and pushes the price up. Then the snipers sell into the crowd and the price falls.PriceBlock 0Snipersbuy firstSecondsEarlybuyersMinutesThe crowdpiles inThenSnipers sellto the crowd
Block 0: the coin is created and snipers buy. Seconds later the first people arrive and buy higher. Minutes later the snipers sell into them.

Why snipers matter to you

Snipers get the cheapest tokens, and those tokens have to be sold to someone. That someone is the buyer who shows up later. The more of the supply snipers hold, the more selling is waiting above your entry.

Example

Ten snipers and twenty buyers (pump.fun-style curve, before fees)

A coin launches. Ten sniper bots each buy 1 SOL in the first block. Over the next minute, twenty normal traders each buy 1 SOL.

  1. Step 1: The first sniper gets about 34.6 million tokens. The tenth gets about 20.6 million for the same 1 SOL. Together the snipers hold about 27% of the supply, for 10 SOL.
  2. Step 2: The first normal buyer gets about 19.6 million tokens for 1 SOL, fewer than any sniper got.
  3. Step 3: After the twenty buys, the snipers sell everything. They receive about 20 SOL, double their money in about a minute.
  4. Step 4: The price drops back to where it stood just after the snipers bought. The twenty buyers paid 20 SOL. At the chart price their tokens are now worth about 13 SOL, and if all twenty sold they would get back only about 10.

Nobody lied and nothing was hacked. The snipers were simply first, and the later buyers were their exit liquidity.

Snipers working for the dev

Not every sniper is an independent bot. Some are the creator's own wallets, funded just before launch and set to buy in the creation block. It is the same trick as a bundle with extra steps. On-chain analysts at Pine Analytics studied a month of pump.fun launches in spring 2025. They found more than 15,000 coins sniped by wallets that had received SOL straight from the coin's creator. Those snipes made a profit 87% of the time. More than half were fully sold within one minute, and nearly 85% within five.

That count only included wallets funded directly by the creator. The same report notes that many creators hide the link behind several hops, so the real number is higher.

How to read snipers on a coin

  • Look at what share of the supply snipers still hold, not just how many there were. Terminals such as GMGN and Axiom show snipers and early buyers, and how much they still hold.
  • If snipers already sold, that pressure is gone. If they still hold a big share, it is waiting.
  • Check whether sniper wallets got their SOL from the dev wallet. Solscan's transfer history shows where a wallet's SOL came from, and Bubblemaps colours wallets it thinks one person controls.
  • A few small snipes are normal. Almost every coin gets some.
Next: cabals, fake volume and fake calls

Check what you learned

0 of 5 answered

  1. Question 1Why can't a person clicking fast beat a sniper bot to a new coin?
  2. Question 2In the worked example, what turned the snipers' 10 SOL into about 20 SOL?
  3. Question 3A coin had several snipers, but they all sold in the first minute. What does that tell you?
  4. Question 4Why is Pine Analytics' count of dev-funded snipers a floor, not the full number?
  5. Question 5TrickyA sniper bought in the creation block. Does that prove the dev is behind it?

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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.