A pair of brothers entered the cryptocurrency world at the beginning of 2020. Within just one year, they sniped altcoins on decentralized exchanges, growing a $50,000 investment portfolio into $50 million in profit. This article is adapted from a piece by CBB, organized, translated, and written by Foresight News. (Background: My dad just bought his first cryptocurrency, and I drained his wallet after checking the mnemonic phrase: Welcome to the crypto world~) (Additional background: The luckiest post-2000s on Earth — Trump’s youngest son, at 19, made $150 million from cryptocurrencies and is now recommended to join the TikTok board of directors.)
Editor’s note: The author of this article, CBB, is a well-known player active in the DeFi and leverage trading communities. He previously gained widespread attention for sharing his experience of earning $5 million using the HyperEVM arbitrage robot (see: “Analyzing HyperEVM Arbitrage Robot: How to Capture a 2-Second Opportunity and Earn $5 Million”). On October 29, CBB also posted a warning about the high leverage risks associated with Stream’s xUSD. Today, possibly influenced by the Balancer hack, XUSD has indeed significantly de-pegged.
In this article, he recounts his journey over a year—from entering the crypto world to sniping altcoins on DEXs and achieving $50 million in profit. Below is the original content:
August 2020. My older brother was teaching information technology at university, while I had just finished an 18-month stint as a product manager at an insurance company. The crypto industry was emerging from years of stagnation, slowly recovering from the crash triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. We made a few small profits on Binance Launchpad, but our total portfolio value was barely $50,000.
At that time, we started hearing about a new protocol called Uniswap. Friends were trading altcoins there, often making 3-4 times returns within a few hours. We had no idea what it was, but intuition told us this thing was extraordinary.
A friend told me about “sniping trades.” He said that when bZx tokens launched on Uniswap, a robot made $500,000 just by sniping. It was almost unbelievable. Both my brother and I were stunned and eager to understand how it was done.
Back then, my brother knew nothing about Solidity smart contracts, and we didn’t even understand the underlying logic of blockchain.
First Sniping Attempt
In late August, we were vacationing with family in Spain. To try sniping on Uniswap, my brother had just started learning Solidity a few days earlier. A token called YMPL was launching, and the market seemed pretty hot. We formed a sniping team and recruited a few friends to pool funds—after all, we were still beginners and didn’t want to bear all the risks alone.
We invested 50 ETH (worth about $20,000 at the time). When YMPL launched, we successfully sniped 8% of the total supply. I logged into Uniswap and sold everything in less than 30 minutes. How much profit? 60 ETH (about $30,000). Considering our entire portfolio was less than $50,000 at the time, we were ecstatic, feeling that making money was so easy.
We wanted to earn more.
Two days later, a new sniping target appeared: VIDYA. With the profits from the previous round, we had more capital and greater confidence. We invested 165 ETH and made a net profit of 159 ETH within 15 minutes—more than our previous gains.
Four days later, another sniping opportunity arose. We invested 460 ETH and earned 353 ETH, equivalent to $135,000. This was our first time making six-figure profits in under an hour. The feeling was incredible. Uniswap’s popularity exploded, trading volume surged, and crypto enthusiasts flooded in. We knew this easy money wouldn’t last long. We had to become more professional and truly understand the underlying logic of sniping trades.
What is the principle of sniping trades?
To list a token on Uniswap, the project team must first add liquidity to the pool. During our earlier sniping attempts, we would wait for the “add liquidity” transaction to be recorded on-chain before sending our buy order, but we always lagged by one block. Some competitors, however, could get their transactions into the same block as the liquidity addition.
After some research, we discovered that through an Ethereum node, we could monitor the public mempool and see pending transactions before they are confirmed on-chain.
Starting in September, our sniping process became:
- Monitor the mempool to catch pending “add liquidity” transactions;
- Immediately send a buy transaction with the same Gas fee;
- Aim to have the buy and liquidity addition transactions included in the same block, executed consecutively.
A New Era of Sniping on Ethereum
Mid-September 2020. Ten days in a row without new tokens launching, this quiet period allowed us to upgrade our robot. But new challenges arose: summer break was over, and my brother still had to teach at university, sometimes coinciding with sniping opportunities during his classes. Fortunately, during the COVID-19 pandemic, all courses were online.
Whenever a token was about to launch, he would tell his students, “Research for ten minutes yourself.” During this window, he could focus on executing sniping trades.
The next target was CHADS. The market was extremely hot, and we prepared to invest 200 ETH, determined to succeed. My brother and I were on a voice call, tense yet excited, under immense pressure. He was the first to see the “add liquidity” transaction on the terminal. When the robot detected the signal, he said in a serious tone, “Ça part.” (French for “It’s starting”). I will never forget that phrase. Before every sniping attempt afterward, he would say the same phrase with the same tone, instantly boosting my adrenaline.
Hearing that, I would frantically refresh Etherscan, hoping to see our ETH balance drop to zero—meaning we had successfully entered the position.
We actually bought in, with a 200 ETH position. The candlestick chart skyrocketed, and my task was to manually sell on Uniswap. The profit from CHADS was staggering. I trembled intensely, sweating all over, highly focused, selling batch after batch to lock in as much profit as possible.
In the end, we netted 675 ETH (about $270,000). The feeling was unbelievable, but the immense pressure and adrenaline left us exhausted. There was no time to rest. Three days later, we sniped FRONTIER, with the same process, same excitement, earning 800 ETH. Two days after that, CHARTEX, with a profit of 700 ETH. Over six days, our total profit reached 2,300 ETH—simply crazy. Just a month earlier, we had been struggling in the crypto industry, with total assets at most $100,000.
On September 18, an unexpected surprise arrived: the Uniswap Airdrop. All addresses that had interacted with Uniswap were eligible to claim it. Because we had been actively engaging with Uniswap for weeks…
