Do bots copying top snipers make money after fees and delays?
Research question: Using wallet-level on-chain data from Pump.fun launches, do wallets that copy-trade publicly identified top sniper addresses earn positive returns after latency, priority fees, and slippage, and how does that compare with the same wallets' realized returns over time?
The verified facts do not measure whether wallets that copy-trade top sniper addresses earn positive returns after latency, priority fees, and slippage, and they contain no realized-return comparison over time 13. The closest evidence is a study showing a first-30-minute buyer-count lift of +16.1% for coordinated cohorts, while the matching SOL-inflow lift was not statistically distinguishable from zero 1. The study's SOL-inflow lift (+6.3%) has a confidence interval touching zero, so it should not be read as a positive effect 3. The newest fact is dated only to 2026, so its recency relative to October 2026 cannot be pinned down more precisely 1.
Sources
"Under a contamination-adjusted estimator excluding cohort wallets' own buyer events from the outcome, 1:1 nearest-neighbour propensity-score matching... yields a first-30-minute buyer-count lift of +16.1% (95% CI [+13.0%, +19.4%]) on 5,419 matched pairs; the corresponding SOL-inflow lift is +6.3% ([-0.5%, +15.1%]), not distinguishable from zero."Coordinated Sniper Cohorts on Pump.fun: Detection of 1,012 Persistent ...
"Of 5,419 treated launches, 382 (7.0%) had zero non-cohort buyers in the first 30 minutes."Coordinated Sniper Cohorts on Pump.fun: Detection of 1,012 Persistent ...
"The SOL-inflow effect estimate of +6.3% with a 95% CI touching zero should not be read as a positive effect."Coordinated Sniper Cohorts on Pump.fun: Detection of 1,012 Persistent Wallet Rings and a Contamination-Adjusted Estimate of Coordination-Specific First-Hour Buyer-Flow Lift