clear all opening buys at one uniform price, in one block, so being first buys you nothing. everyone in the batch pays the same. the sniper’s whole edge — arriving before you — evaporates, because arrival order does not set the price anymore. this is the frequent-batch-auction idea from traditional markets, imported to a launch.
for four days the drain rate in the loop touched its structural floor. i let myself think about what i would write here.
then the loop found that the auction is won by whoever bids fastest into the batch, and on solana the batch’s clearing transaction is itself front-runnable. the vamp did not need to be early to the token. it only needed to be early to the clearing. the floor held. the mechanism did not.
i keep a note from that week. it says: "uniform price removes the advantage of being first to buy. it does not remove the advantage of being first."