Strategy reference

This page mirrors STRATEGY.md, the repo's live spec, in plain language. Values shown are the current shipped defaults from config.toml — several were deliberately tightened after live book review, so where the spec's original bracketed default differs, this page shows what actually runs. Everything here is hot-reloadable via Settings / config.toml.

Philosophy: capital preservation first. One-sided SOL bid-ask below price as the default entry, mechanical exits instead of conviction-holding, PnL denominated in SOL. Wherever a human would "ask the group," the bot is strictly more defensive.

1. Scanning

Runs every 60s:

1. Pool sweep — GET dlmm.datapi.meteora.ag/pools, non-blacklisted pools with TVL > $5,000, sorted by 30-minute fee/TVL, first 3 pages.
2. Dedupe to canonical token — group pools by token mint. If multiple tokens share a symbol (copycats), only the one with the highest 24h volume is considered; the rest are ignored for 24h.
3. Best pool per token — highest fee_tvl_ratio_24h among that token's pools that pass the pool gates. One pool per token.
4. Output: scored candidates → vetting → entry queue (best score first, ties broken by younger pool).

Optional discovery enrichment: GMGN trending and smart-money feeds (needs GMGN_API_KEY; auto-off without one — how to get a key). These only add score bonuses (capped at +10 total) — never a substitute for vetting. Calls are serialized and paced to stay under GMGN’s rate limits; on 429 the bot parks ~5 minutes and keeps scanning without GMGN until then.

2. Pool gates (hard)

A candidate pool must pass every gate:

Gate	Current default	Why
TVL	≥ $5,000 and ≤ $2,000,000	Below: no routing, arb-only. Above: fees too diluted for meme mode
Market cap	≥ $100,000 ($100–200k routes to the micro sleeve)	Hard floor
Final opportunity score	≥ 60 (min_entry_score, checked after vetting)	Below it the size was already zero; raise it to trade fewer, better entries
Fee/TVL 24h (or lifetime if pool < 24h old)	≥ 20%/day	The meme-pool heat threshold
Fee/TVL 30m, annualized to daily	≥ 10%/day	Catches pools that were hot but died
Volume 30m	≥ $25,000	Fees need flow now, not this morning
Volume trend vol_1h / (vol_24h/24)	≥ 0.8	Current hour at least ~80% of the daily average — not in freefall
Base fee	0.2%–5%	> 5% = arb-only pools
Bin step	≥ 80 for tokens < 7 days old	Wide coverage with fewer bins
Fee collection	prefer_quote — quote-only (SOL) pools get a score bonus; both-token pools stay eligible	Quote-only pools pay fees pre-converted to SOL. Hard modes quote_only / both_only / any exist in config
Quote token	SOL required	Accumulate-SOL thesis; stable/USDC pairs are out of scope
Pool price vs Jupiter quote	divergence ≤ 2%	The oracle-glitch / empty-pool trap
Pool share	our position ≤ 20% of pool TVL	Otherwise we'd be the exit liquidity

3. Token vetting gates (hard)

Computed fresh at entry time from RPC + the RugCheck free API:

• Mint authority revoked, freeze authority revoked.
• Token program: SPL Token, or Token-2022 with no extensions beyond metadata (no transfer fees or hooks).
• Single holder ≤ 15% of supply; top-10 holders ≤ 40% — both excluding labeled pool vaults, lockers, and burn addresses.
• Insider/funding clusters ≤ 10% of supply (same-funder wallet clustering + launch-slot snipers).
• Creator has zero rugged tokens in our DB or RugCheck's creatorTokens. One strike = permanent creator blacklist.
• RugCheck score_normalised < 41 (their "Danger" line) — used as a veto only, never as approval.
• Token age ≥ 45 min — survive the instant-rug window. A safety gate; leave it on. Age is the mint's age via RugCheck, not the pool's.
• The ≤ 14 day ceiling is off by default. It was a fit gate, not a safety one, and a weaker proxy than what we already measure: the pool gates require current fee flow and volume, so anything reaching vetting is active now. An old meme catching a fresh bid is a legitimate pool. Enable age_max_enabled to restore it.
• Not on our blacklist (§8 below).

Each vetting check has a master on/off switch in Settings (age min/max, insider gate, holder gate, RugCheck veto, creator-rug gate, GMGN honeypot/sell-tax gate). Off = skip that hard fail; thresholds still apply when on.

4. Timing filter (soft — feeds the score)

These never override a hard fail; they only tilt the score (how big, how soon):

• Price not in freefall: 15m return ≥ −20%.
• Not top-blasting: price within 3% of ATH plus stoch-RSI-style overextension on 5m candles → penalty. The bot enters after a retrace leg, not into a vertical.
• Buy/sell imbalance from OHLCV volume: heavy net selling in the last 5m → penalty.
• Volume ignition: last 5m candle ≥ 3× the trailing-hour average → bonus.

5. Opportunity score (0–100)

Weighted blend, drives sizing and queue priority:

Component	Weight
Fee/TVL momentum (30m vs 24h)	30%
Volume/TVL turnover	20%
Vetting softness (holder distribution quality, holder growth, maker diversity)	25%
Timing (§4)	15%
Pool structure (bin-step fit, fee tier vs competition)	10%

GMGN trending bonuses (sustained +8, emerging +4, fading +3) and smart-money flow bonuses stack on top but are capped at +10 combined; heavy smart-money net selling (> $5,000) applies a −8 penalty.

6. Entry execution

Default shape — one-sided SOL, BidAsk, below current price:

1. Compute swing high/low from 5m OHLCV over the pool's life (max 24h lookback).
2. Range top = active bin. Range bottom = the shallower of: fib 0.786 retracement of the swing, or −50% from current price. Floor of −40% minimum depth — never a thin sliver. (The planner also derives a cap from the P0 crash threshold, so no bins are planned below where P0 would already have fired.)
3. Translate to bin IDs. A DLMM position account spans ≤ 69 bins; if the range needs more, split into at most 2 position accounts.
4. Bin-array rent (~0.075 SOL per array, non-refundable when arrays are new): soft budget one array — shrink the range first. Hard budget two arrays (0.15 SOL) only when score ≥ 80. The bot quotes actual uninitialized arrays on-chain; RPC quote failure falls back to the worst-case estimate (fail closed). Never more than two arrays.
5. Open with StrategyType.BidAsk, SOL side only (totalXAmount = 0).
6. Tx policy: active-bin liquidity slippage 5% (≈5 bins at bin step 100 — the earlier 1% setting produced 100% of live open failures as ExceededBinSlippageTolerance). Priority fee auto from recent fees; a failed program simulation never resends the same tx; 3 network retries, then abandon and re-quote. On bin-slippage rejection the live path rebuilds the position rather than spamming the same bad transaction.
7. Second tranche: for score ≥ 85, an additional BidAsk pocket below the primary, sized at 50% of the primary, down toward −70% (clamped by the P0 safety floor). Skipped on the micro sleeve, on young tokens and whale-overhang entries (see Risk & sizing), when the primary already fills the floor, or when slots/size floors block it. Live opens the pocket exactly where it was planned, below the primary, and skips it if price has already fallen into it. Tranches count toward max open positions.

Exit swap path: on close, the token side converts to SOL via the Meteora Zap SDK (Jupiter V6), with a lite-Jupiter fallback. Normal exits use 50 bps swap slippage; P0 safety exits use 1000 bps (speed over price).

7. The P0–P5 exit ladder

Each open position is polled every 15s. Rules are checked in strict priority order — first match wins:

Priority	Name	Trigger	Action
P0	Safety exit	Any of: pool TVL −40% in 10 min · single wallet sells >3% of supply in one tx · tracked insider cluster distributing · new whale >10% · metadata changed or RugCheck flips to Danger · price −60% from entry (at any age — there is deliberately no time window)	Remove 100% + close immediately, market-dump token→SOL at 10% slippage, blacklist token + creator, log incident
P1	Stop loss	Mark-to-market in SOL (both sides + unclaimed fees) < entry × 0.75	Close, swap token→SOL, realize loss, 24h re-entry cooldown. No conviction override — ever
P2	Rotation	Fee rate (30m annualized) < 5%/day for 3 consecutive polls, or 30m volume < $5,000; or position age > 48h (then it stays only if it would qualify as a fresh entry today)	Close — dead weight; capital rotates to the queue
P3	Above range	Price > range top by 5%, sustained	Close via zap, recover rent, record PnL. See win vs missed below
P4	In range	Earning	Claim/bank fees; escape hatch; profit lock (below)
P5	Below range	Price under the bottom bin — position is 100% token	Hold 15 min grace (wick tolerance), then close, swap all token→SOL, realize the loss, 24h cooldown. Coinciding safety signal escalates to P0

P3: win vs missed

Two cases that look the same but mean opposite things:

• Win — price dipped into the range, then recovered above it. Every bin it climbed back through sold our tokens above acquisition price; the position ends ~100% SOL with round-trip profit + fees. Exit after 10 min sustained above range (short, so follow mode can arm).
• Missed — price pumped without ever entering the range. The SOL was never touched: no profit, no loss, just idle capital. Exit after 45 min sustained (a shorter timer was churning ~0.002 SOL rent per round trip on slots the bot wasn't refilling).

Re-entry after P3 (anti-chasing)

• The token goes back through the full pipeline as a fresh candidate — including the timing filter — so re-entry happens after a retrace signal, never into a vertical pump.
• Ladder decay: each successive re-entry on the same token within 24h sizes at 0.75× the previous; max 2 re-entries. A re-entry must still clear a 0.2 SOL viability floor.
• Rate limits: ≤ 2 rebalances per position per 6h; skip entirely if projected rent + tx cost > 25% of fees earned so far.
• House-money rule is off (it banked notional profit with no release path; deployable only ever fell).

P3-F: Follow mode

Optional overtime after any P3 close (win or missed), designed not to chase — the gate set below was the only configuration at/above breakeven in simulation over the recorded post-exit price paths:

• A P3 close on a main position arms a chain.
• A leg opens only when all hold: pool 30m volume ≥ $100,000 (4× the normal entry floor) · current 30m and 1h fee rates annualized ≥ the 24h gate (bypassing the stale 24h average) · price retraced 15% from the post-exit/post-high peak · fresh token vetting passes.
• Leg shape: one-sided SOL BidAsk, 30% deep (tighter than the 40% default), top at current price, escape hatch disabled.
• Up-only: after a leg closes up-and-out, the chain re-arms only once price makes a new chain high. This condition alone separated +EV from −EV in the sim.
• Chain ends on: any non-P3 leg close · 3 legs · cumulative chain PnL ≤ −0.075 SOL · 3 consecutive polls under the normal volume floor · 12h age · blacklist or vet fail. A failed leg open cools the chain 300s.
• Legs are fixed at 0.25 SOL, exempt from the re-entry ladder, and excluded from the main Kelly ledger — the mode must earn bigger sizing with its own closed-leg evidence.
• While a chain is live, the normal pipeline skips that token: one owner of re-entry timing per token.

8. P4 detail: fees, escape hatch, profit lock

• Claim when unclaimed fees ≥ max(0.05 SOL, 20× estimated tx cost), or every 4h, whichever first. When price first drops below range, fees are claimed immediately (min 0.005 SOL) so token-side fees convert to SOL at the top of a dump, not the bottom.
• Fee destination bank: token-side fees swap to SOL at claim time and bank to the wallet. (A compound mode exists in config for pools scoring ≥ 70 but banking is the shipped behavior; majors also bank only.)
• Escape hatch: if price fell through > 60% of the range depth and then recovers to the upper 25% of the range → close and re-enter. This realizes fees and resets near the average acquisition price instead of round-tripping the whole dip. Disabled on follow legs and majors.
• Profit lock: if mark-to-market ≥ entry × 1.30 while still in range → withdraw 30% of liquidity (position stays open and earning) and zap it to SOL. Fires at most once per position. A floor under strong runners without giving up the fee stream.

9. Majors sleeve (separate playbook)

SOL-quoted majors/alts on a symbol allowlist (PUMP, ANSEM, JTO, BONK, WIF, RAY, JUP), discovered by their own sweep. Key differences from meme:

Aspect	Majors behavior
Shape	Spot (uniform bins), 12% below / 6% above price — SOL biased to the downside
Timing entry	RSI(14) ≤ 45, or price in the bottom 40% of the 24h swing; never above 75% of the swing
Size	Fixed 0.75 SOL, max 1.5 SOL per position, max 1 slot, ≤40% of wallet
Stop loss	entry × 0.60 (wider than meme — spot holds inventory)
Below-range grace	120 min (vs meme 15)
Escape hatch / profit lock	Off — majors hold through dips
Rotation	Much slower: 20 consecutive polls under a 0.05%/day fee floor; max age 168h; above-range sustains 240/480 min
Fees	Bank only, claim min 0.02 SOL

Majors run after meme entries and only when ≥ 2 slots stay free for memes. Token age must be ≥ 7 days.

10. Blacklist & skip rules

Kept in the blacklist table with reason + expiry:

Kind	What lands there
Permanent	Creators with any rug in history; tokens that triggered P0; Token-2022 with transfer-fee/hook extensions
24h cooldown	Copycat losers of symbol dedupe; tokens that hard-failed vetting; tokens exited at a loss
Structural skips (never candidates, not blacklisted)	Base fee > 5% pools; non-SOL quotes (incl. SOL-USDC); pools where our position would exceed 20% of TVL

Every skip is logged with the failing gate in the decisions table — the tuning dataset. Skipped candidates get outcome backfill (did the ones we passed on moon or rug?) so gates can be tightened or loosened with evidence, not vibes.

11. Accounting

• SOL is the unit of account (USD stored as a snapshot column for readability).
• Per position: fees claimed + fees unclaimed + (exit value − entry value) − rent − tx costs, all in SOL. Realized PnL is measured wallet delta — what actually left and returned — never our own intent.
• Reconciliation: on startup, the chain wins. The bot enumerates the wallet's actual DLMM positions, diffs against the DB, repairs, and logs discrepancies.

How it worksRisk & sizingConfigurationSTRATEGY.md