Why trading calls from the biggest crypto influencers is so hard (and where the edge is)
When a famous influencer posts a token, thousands of followers and dozens of bots try to buy in the same second. Bots pay a higher priority fee or a Jito tip so the validator puts their buy first in the block; every buy ahead of you lifts the price, so you enter well above the call price and often become the exit for the bots. Lesser-known influencers with a good record (our Rising stars) are watched by fewer bots, so the price at your entry is closer to the price at the call.
Two kinds of influencers
Our influencer ranking now has two tabs. Stars are the most famous accounts (100,000+ followers, names like Murad or Ansem): their posts move the market, but everyone sees them at the same moment. Rising stars are lesser-known accounts with a measured record: harder to find, followed by fewer people, and that is exactly why their calls can still be traded.
Calls do matter: in our measurements 52% of tokens called by a measured KOL reached 2x, against 14% of tokens without a call. The question is not whether a call moves the price, but who gets the move.
What happens in the first second after a big call
- The post appears. Bots that watch the account parse the ticker or contract address in milliseconds.
- They send buy transactions with a high priority fee or a Jito tip.
- Thousands of people open the post, copy the address and press buy, usually with the wallet's default fee.
- The validator building the next block fills it with the highest bidders first. Your transaction lands behind the bots, if it lands at all in a congested block.
- Each buy ahead of you pushes the price up the pool's curve. The bots then sell into the crowd that is still buying.
How bots pay to go first
Every Solana transaction pays a small base fee (5,000 lamports per signature, a fraction of a cent). On top of that a sender can add a priority fee: a price per compute unit that tells the block producer "include me first". When many transactions compete for the same token in the same moment, the ones paying more per compute unit are generally scheduled first.
The second route is a Jito tip. Most Solana validators run Jito's client, which auctions "bundles": a group of transactions that executes together, in a fixed order, only if the tip is paid. A bot can bundle its buy right after the influencer's own transaction or right before a wave of buys, which is front-running. Paying a few dollars of tip is cheap when the bot expects to sell to thousands of buyers seconds later.
That is why "being fast" on a big call is not a human game: a person reading X cannot outbid software that reacts in milliseconds and pays for its place in the block.
What it costs you to be behind the bots
Show as table
| Value | Note | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st (the fastest bot) | 0% | pays the call price |
| After 5 bots | 10.3% | |
| After 10 bots | 21% | |
| After 20 bots | 44% | typical retail position on a big call |
| After 40 bots | 96% |
In a constant-product pool, each buy lifts the price for the next one. Try your own numbers:
With 20 bots buying $500 each in a pool with $100k of liquidity, the price is already about 44% higher when your buy executes. If the bots then sell back to the call price, you are down about 31% without the token having done anything. Same logic as bundles and snipers at launch: tokens where snipers took more than 30% of the supply fell 58% from the top in the median case.
Why rising stars leave more room
- Fewer bots watch them. Sniper bots follow the accounts with the most reach; a 15,000-follower account with a good record is rarely on their list.
- Smaller crowd, smaller first wave. Your buy is not competing with thousands of others in the same block.
- Measured, not famous. We rank them by hit rate, median peak, rug rate and late calls, not by follower count.
- Agreement still matters. When three or more measured influencers call the same token within 15 minutes, 59% reached 2x versus 33% otherwise (influencer clustering).
If you still want to trade a Star's call
- Don't chase the first minute. Wait for the first wave of bots to sell, then decide on the chart.
- Set a maximum price before you buy, for example no more than 30% above the price at the call.
- Keep the buy under about 2% of the pool's liquidity (Jupiter settings).
- A higher priority fee helps you land, but it does not get you ahead of Jito bundles.
Members see both tabs live, with every call measured within minutes and copy-trading on the influencers that hit.
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MemeSonar does this for you in real time: every new Solana token, every influencer call and every tracked wallet, scored and filtered for rugs.
Request accessNot financial advice. Numbers are measurements of past tokens and calls; meme coins are extremely risky and most go to zero.