Before I begin, here’s the setup this bot is running on:

• Staked RPC
• gRPC
• VPS

None of the services have crazy-high request limits, but they’re all located in the same data center, so there’s <1 ms latency between them.

Hello, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks analyzing highly profitable sniper bots and building a program to try and replicate their strategies. This bot operates only on pump.fun (same as the sniper bots I’ve been studying).

I get that in sniping there’s the usual saying: “If you aren’t first, you’re last” — basically meaning you’re just exit liquidity for anyone who gets in before you. So I built this bot with speed as the top priority.

The bot does not make any RPC calls in the hot path (besides a warmup phase at launch). All filters rely on data we can get from gRPC at token creation.

From gRPC, I’m currently using:

• Initial dev buy
• Blacklisted creators (ignores wallets where the dev is clearly launching just to rug snipers)
• Metadata requirements (e.g., requires a valid URI)
• Anti-bundler logic (not API-powered, to avoid extra delay)
• Buy size based on dev buy (more of a risk-management lever than a filter)

All of these filters can be toggled on/off and adjusted as needed.

Strategy

• The TX is constructed so that it fails if someone buys between us and the dev (so we only land if we’re truly early).
• The bot uses laddered sells.
• Losses are minimized (and usually small) because the TX only lands if we’re first in.
• Profits are maximized on the few that run — it’s not built for crazy long holds but it is set up to handle tokens that 5x.

Because of this “speed is everything” approach, it takes about 3–5 ms to apply all filters (plus a few other minor calculations) and decide whether to buy. With this setup, we’re able to land transactions within ~300 ms of token creation.

The Problem

Despite all that, ~95% of tokens I buy are completely dead — basically no movement. It’s obvious these other sniper bots are filtering on something I’m not accounting for.

I compared my stats to one particular bot over a 24-hour window:

• Their bot: ~22 tokens/hour
• My bot: ~90 tokens/hour

The tokens I entered were mostly super dead, with the occasional one that pumped. The tokens they entered actually had movement. They still bought into some duds, but they were catching way more runners than I was.

Conclusion

I’m trying to figure out what I’m missing. Is there a chance their bots are using extra RPC calls for filters that can’t be derived from Geyser alone? Initially that sounded like BS to me, because they’re almost always first in, and additional RPC calls can easily add a couple hundred milliseconds, but I genuinely don’t know what other Geyser-based filters they could be using to get such a big quality difference while still staying that fast.

I’d love feedback from anyone who’s knowledgeable in this space.

What do you think I’m missing here — is it likely an extra RPC call or are there are there additional geyser based filters I’m overlooking?