Blockchain data firm Bitquery found that outside buying within roughly 1.3 seconds occurred for 53% of new coins in its later sample period, nearly matching the 52% rate from earlier measurements, according to analysis published on October 26. The finding suggests that Solana’s block-time reductions from August through October did not substantially reduce the prevalence of early sniping on memecoin platforms like Pump.fun.
Sniping refers to racing to buy a token in its first moments. Bitquery defined outside wallets as any wallet other than the coin’s first buyer. The 1.3-second window captured activity across three slots in the earlier period and five slots in the later period, accounting for Solana’s accelerating slot-speed increases.
When measured by first-block purchases alone, the decline was sharper: outside buying dropped from 42% in the earlier sample (Aug. 5, 12, 19) to 32% in the later sample (Sept. 23, 30). The earlier period saw first blocks lasting 0.42 seconds; the later period compressed to 0.27 seconds. But when the same activity was measured across equal elapsed time rather than fixed block counts, the near-parity between 53% and 52% indicated that snipers adapted their strategies as slots shortened.
Sandwich-bot activity showed a more volatile pattern. Sandwich attacks involve buying before another trader’s swap and selling afterward to profit from the price movement. Bitquery detected 30 sandwich instances per 10,000 swaps in early August, declining to 21 per 10,000 swaps by Aug. 29-Sept. 17, then rising to 33 per 10,000 swaps between Sept. 19 and Oct. 7. The reason for the late-period increase was not specified in Bitquery’s analysis.
Solana’s final slot reduction to 200 milliseconds took effect on October 9, after the measurement window closed on October 7. The Solana Foundation’s August modeling had described competing effects on sandwich profitability: shorter slot times constrain attackers’ reaction windows, but fewer competing trades in each slot can also mean less price movement absorption before a user’s swap executes.
Bitquery’s outside-buy measure captures early purchasing activity without establishing whether every qualifying buyer was automated or predatory. The analysis covered Pump.fun coins and PumpSwap activity during the block-time reduction rollout.
