I first came to know about memecoin trading from this forum, maybe around a year to a year and a half ago. Someone had shared a detailed post about how he turned 2 SOL into 45 SOL in just two weeks. The post also explained the basics of trading memecoins and how to filter tokens to avoid scams.
That caught my attention. I bought some SOL and jumped straight into trading without really knowing much. The result was obvious — I started losing money from the very beginning. Luckily, I only used around $5 per trade, so the losses were small.
Days went by, and while I kept losing, I was also learning. At some point, I decided to stop trading blindly and instead use my programming skills to build something useful.
First I built a Solana DEX trading bot for myself. It took me quite a long time because I was completely new to crypto, especially DEX trading. At first, I created a simple DEX caller bot that checked sites like Dexscreener or Axiom using filters I gave it. If the conditions matched, it sent the token address to my private Telegram group so I could track its performance.
I also used Phanes to monitor the tokens I got from my bot. Every day I was receiving over 100+ token calls since the bot was running 24/7 on my server. The hit rate stayed consistent at 40%+ (hit rate meaning the token at least doubled after being first called). I saw tokens go 400x from my bot’s calls, and there were days when at least one token went 100x.
But I didn’t take any manual action to buy those tokens at the time. I had already lost a decent amount of money trying to trade memecoins here and there, and I realized I was terrible at trading. I never trusted the tokens I bought, so I usually sold too early.
For example, once I was tracking whale activity. I noticed a certain pattern: whales would buy a type of token, the price would drop around 80% over 16–17 hours, and then there would be a massive rebound. I tried following this pattern. I bought a token, and within an hour it dropped 50%. I bought again because I was convinced it would bounce back. But after 7 hours, it dropped 70%, and I panicked and sold everything.
Later, I shared that token in my trading group. About 10 hours after I sold, one of the group members congratulated me because the token had pumped 87x. He thought I made money since I shared it, but in reality, I sold for a loss. That was the moment I decided I shouldn’t trade manually anymore.
I knew emotions were my biggest weakness, so I focused completely on developing a trading bot. I wrote it in Python first. The bot performed great — transactions took less than 0.30 seconds. I added patterns I saw from Phanes calls, like buying fresh tokens or tokens that hit certain market caps.
To make it work properly, I had to buy a premium RPC and use Solana Tracker’s API for price, liquidity, and market cap. That alone cost me $49/month, plus around $8 for the server. In total, I was spending nearly $100/month while testing and running the bot.
When I made it live and tested 4–5 times, it worked, but it wasn’t perfect. The biggest problem was memecoin volatility. The bot had to handle sudden spikes (wicks). If you ignored the spike, you’d miss a sell opportunity. But if you sold at the spike, you risked getting caught in a fake wave. That was the hardest challenge.
And honestly, the market kept getting worse. The good period I talked about was about a year ago, but the last 4–5 months were much rougher. So I stopped the bot and let it “sleep” until the market turns green again. My hope is that if things recover, I can run it for a few months and see real results.
Later, I rewrote my bot in Rust for better speed and performance since Rust is native to Solana. Right now, I’m just waiting and hoping for better market conditions.
Hope is tricky — it doesn’t let go easily. I’m not an expert, but I tried my best.
