Faster Solana slots fail to stop memecoin bot snipers

Blockchain data company Bitquery's latest analysis, with figures verified Oct. 26, found that similar shares of new Pump.fun coins received an outside buy within roughly 1.3 seconds across Solana's earlier block-time cuts. Detected sandwich patterns also persisted in the sampled trading.The share was about 53% in the earlier sample, compared with 52% later. An outside wallet means any wallet other than the coin's first buyer. The comparison used Aug. 5, 12, and 19 against Sept. 23 and 30 and Oct. 7.Both comparisons end Oct. 7. Solana's rollout record places the final reduction to a 200-millisecond slot target on Oct. 9, leaving that last step outside the trading observations.Sniping means racing to buy a token in its first moments. Bitquery's outside-buy measure captures early buying without establishing that every qualifying buyer was automated or predatory.The share of new coins receiving an outside buy in their first block fell from 42% to 32%. But the first block also became shorter, lasting about 0.27 seconds in the later sample against 0.42 seconds earlier. A first-block purchase had a narrower window in which to qualify.The roughly 1.3-second comparison covered three slots b...