Sniping

Honey Badger's sniping stack lets you buy new tokens the moment they list — either the second liquidity is added to a new AMM pool, or the moment a pump.fun / launchpad token graduates. This guide covers both flavors and the rule engine that drives them.

The three sniper paths

Honey Badger currently exposes two user-facing sniper modes:

1. Auto Buy New Launches — rule-based auto-sniper for freshly-created XDEX pools. Fires when a new pool is discovered and it matches all your rule filters.
2. Snipe a Token — one-shot sniper for a specific token address you already know about. Watches for liquidity add and buys on the first block that clears the guards.

(A third path, "Launchpad Sniper" for pump.fun-style bonding-curve graduations, is Wave 2 EPIC scope. It ships behind a feature flag with limited pilot users.)

Both paths use the same underlying safety checks, gas engine, and auto-exit configuration.

Getting started

From the dashboard

The Sniping page in the dashboard shows two intent cards: Snipe a Token and Auto Buy New Launches. Click the one that matches what you want to do — the rest of the flow is guided.

From Telegram

/snipe

Presents both intents as inline buttons. Pick "one-shot" for a specific token, or "auto rule" to build a filter set.

Rules for "Auto Buy New Launches"

Each rule is a filter set. The sniper watches every new XDEX pool and only fires when all filters pass.

The dashboard shows a preview of your rule below the form: what it would have fired on over the last 24 hours of pool activity. Use this to sanity-check that your filters aren't too tight (0 candidates) or too loose (spraying every launch).

Anti-Rug guards (WP-4757)

All snipes run through the anti-rug pipeline before the buy is submitted:

• Honeypot simulation — dry-run a sell of the buy amount. If it reverts, abort.
• Tax scan — decode the buy and sell tax from the pool metadata; skip anything above your rule's max.
• Ownership scan — check whether the token has an active mint/freeze authority. Warn on non-renounced. Optionally skip.
• LP lock check — verify that the LP tokens are held by a known locker, or by a burn address, and how long the lock runs.
• RiskLabel — the same on-token risk classifier the Trade page uses. Any HIGH-risk label skips.

If a guard fails, the attempt is logged as a "skip" with the reason. You can see the skip stream on the Sniper page.

Gas & speed

Sniping is a latency race. Honey Badger uses a gas multiplier ladder so you don't have to think in raw priority-fee terms:

The bot's transaction submission path went from ~30 seconds to ~1.7 seconds (submit → confirm) after the WP-4832 latency fix, so gas ladder settings translate more directly into rank ordering than they used to.

Auto-Exit configuration

You almost never want a snipe to sit unmanaged. Every snipe rule can attach one or more auto-exit triggers:

• TP-Ladder — Sell 25% at +50%, 25% at +100%, etc. Configurable rungs.
• Trailing Stop — Follow the peak down by X%.
• Hard Stop-Loss — Sell 100% if price drops to a trigger.
• Time-Based Exit — Sell after N minutes regardless of price.

TP-Ladder + trailing stop is the most-used combo. Time-based exit is useful for anti-rug: "if it hasn't 2×'d in 10 minutes, get out."

Managing rules & snipes

List active rules

/snipe rules

Shows every rule, its filter summary, its 24h fire count, and its PnL.

List active positions from snipes

/snipe positions

Shows every snipe-sourced position, current PnL, and any attached auto-exit orders.

Cancel or pause a rule

/snipe rule pause <rule_id>
/snipe rule delete <rule_id>

Paused rules stop firing but keep their state. Deleted rules can't be recovered — export a copy first if you might want it back.

Snipe status codes

Honest note on adoption

Very few users run active sniper rules today. We ship the feature because a small number of advanced users want it, and the anti-rug pipeline is high-quality, but we're not going to tell you it's "battle-tested at scale." If you're new to sniping, we recommend running rules in a paper-trade / observe mode for a week (turn Buy Amount down to a fraction of an XNT) before increasing size.

Common mistakes

1. Filters too loose — sniper fires on every new pool including scams. Fix: tighten min liquidity, require renounced.
2. Filters too tight — 0 fires in a week. Fix: relax initial liquidity floor, allow non-renounced with LP lock, check the 24h preview.
3. No auto-exit — you snipe well and then forget to sell. Fix: always attach TP-Ladder + trailing.
4. Gas too low — you consistently get outbid. Fix: move to 2× minimum, use 3× for high-competition launches.
5. Too much size per rule — one honeypot survives the guards and eats a full slot. Fix: keep per-slot size small and increase Max Position Slots.

Supported venues

• XDEX (primary) — every XNT-paired pool is watched
• Launchpad graduations — Wave 2 EPIC, pilot access only

Related pages