MECHANICS
What a bundler is actually doing.
Six steps between pressing launch and a bundle landing inside the opening tax window. Written from a working implementation on Robinhood Chain mainnet, with the mistakes it took to get there.
The problem in one paragraph
A pons launch opens with a 99% tax on buying that decays to nothing in three seconds. Addresses named at creation are exempt. So a team's wallets can buy the opening for free — but only if they arrive while the window is still open, and only if the token they are buying already exists.
That is the bind. You cannot send a buy to a contract that has not been deployed, and waiting for the deployment to confirm burns the window. The way out is to work out the address in advance.
Read the live configuration
Supply, curve fee, graduation threshold, the launch fee, and the fee policy all come off the factory before anything is signed. Documentation goes stale; a contract read does not.
One detail costs money if you get it wrong: the fee policy has to be read from a token that already launched. Asking about the zero address returns an empty struct, which silently produces a different CREATE2 address — and a volley sent to an address with no contract on it.
Predict where the curve will live
The launch deployer exposes a function that computes the token and curve addresses from the parameters you are about to launch with, before either exists.
It takes a struct of nineteen fields. Two of them are not what you would guess: feePolicy is the shared meme hook rather than a per-launch address, and originalDeployer is whoever initiated the transaction even when it goes through the router.
Quote the curve forward, locally
Opening reserves follow from the configuration, so every buy in the bundle can be priced without touching the network — including the way each buy moves the price for the one behind it.
Fees come off the input on a buy and off the output on a sell. Mirroring one to quote the other overstates the result, which is why the two directions get separate arithmetic.
Sign everything before sending anything
The launch transaction and every bundle buy are signed offline against the predicted address. Ten transactions sign in about nineteen milliseconds.
This is the step that makes the difference. Signing after the launch confirms means waiting on a receipt, and the usual library default polls every four seconds — longer than the entire tax window.
Send the launch, then the volley
The launch goes out and the buys follow immediately, without waiting for confirmation. In a measured run the last buy left 634 milliseconds after the launch and landed three blocks later.
Nothing here buys priority. Robinhood Chain orders transactions by arrival, so the only variable is how fast they leave — which is why every network round trip was moved out of the way first.
Read what actually happened
The launch receipt carries the real token and curve addresses. Comparing them against the prediction is the check that the whole approach held.
Each buy is then read from its own event rather than assumed: what filled, at what price, in which block. A bundle that reports one success or failure for sixteen transactions is hiding something.
What one run measured
Ten wallets, live on mainnet, with the sequence above.
19 ms
To sign ten transactions offline
634 ms
Launch sent to last buy sent
+3
Blocks between launch and fills
±0.5%
Gap between the local quote and the fill
What it does not do
It does not guarantee going first. Ordering inside a block belongs to the sequencer — in one run ten buys landed in the same block but not in the order they were sent.
It does not stop anyone else buying. A stranger can send a transaction between the launch and the volley; the tax simply makes it a poor idea while the window is open.
And it does not create demand. A coordinated opening buys a position. It does not make anybody else want the token, and any description that implies otherwise is selling something.
Related
GUIDE
How launching on pons works
The curve, the tax, the fees and graduation — the platform this all runs on.
ARTICLE
A first-come sequencer changes what speed means
Why priority fees buy nothing here, and what to optimise instead.
ARTICLE
The exemption list: 32 addresses, fixed
What the protocol allows a creator to name, and why it cannot be extended.
All of this, on one screen
No scripts, no command line, no extensions.