Snipers Pocket $1.3M Using ‘Flashblocks’ on Jesse Pollak’s Creator-Coin on Base Blockchain

Blockchain snipers have made a significant profit of over $1.3 million by taking advantage of the launch of Base founder Jesse Pollak’s creator coin. This rapid-fire trade was made possible by the introduction of “flashblocks” on the Coinbase-backed layer-2 blockchain.

During the release of 500 million JESSE tokens, half of the total supply was seeded into a liquidity pool. Within the same on-chain block, automated software enabled buyers to acquire 261.7 million tokens, as reported by Arkham Intelligence. The top two snipers were able to walk away with profits of $707,700 and $619,600, respectively.

Snipers are traders who use algorithms to frontrun other trades when a new token is issued. This practice became common during the memecoin mania earlier this year. In this particular case, the sniper was able to purchase JESSE in the same block the token was issued.

One of the winning wallets spent around $191,000 to buy 7.6% of the token supply and tipped the Base sequencer more than $44,000 in priority fees to secure the trade before others. After selling their full allocation, the trader made a profit of over $600,000.

According to pseudonymous analyst bheau, the mechanics behind these snipes stem from flashblocks, a feature rolled out by Base in July. While Base has two-second block times, it now produces a series of 200-millisecond micro-blocks within each full block. This allows bots to detect a token-deployment transaction as soon as it appears in the first flashblock and submit high-fee buy orders that settle in the next flashblock, ensuring both transactions appear in the same on-chain block.

Jesse Pollak has described creator coins as a new tool for alignment between creators and their audiences, putting ownership, control, and upside back in the hands of creators and their followers. JESSE is currently trading at a $13.8 million Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV), with $4.4 million in liquidity and $33.5 million in trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap.

Overall, the introduction of flashblocks has provided a new opportunity for traders to profit from token launches on the Base platform. The use of automated software and high-fee buy orders has allowed snipers to make significant profits in a short amount of time. This highlights the importance of staying informed about new developments in the blockchain space to take advantage of emerging opportunities.