The opening tax
98% at the instant of every bell, falling linearly to nothing over thirty seconds.
Every session opens with a tax on buying. It starts at 98 percent and falls in a straight line to zero over the next thirty seconds. Selling is never taxed this way.
Why
A market that opens at a known second is a target. Without the tax, the fastest bot buys everything in the first slot of every session and sells it back to everyone else. The tax makes that trade lose money, and it costs nothing to anyone who waits half a minute.
When it applies
At every open, not just the first one:
- The opening bell each trading day.
- The reopen after lunch in Hong Kong and Tokyo, which is a second open every day those venues trade.
- The instant a coin is created, so a coin launched in the middle of a session cannot be sniped in its first slot either.
A creator may instead choose to start trading at the venue's next bell. Nobody, the creator included, can trade before it.
The arithmetic
The rate is the full rate scaled by how much of the decay window is left. Fifteen seconds into a thirty second window, half the window remains, so the rate is half of 98 percent. At thirty seconds it is nothing, and it stays nothing until the next bell.
The trade panel shows the live rate and what it will cost you on the amount you typed. Above half, it asks you to confirm twice.
Exemptions
The creator and the wallets named at launch pay no opening tax. The list is fixed at creation, cannot be added to afterwards, and is shown on the coin's page for anyone to read.
This cuts both ways
An exempt wallet is exempt at every open, every day, not just the first one. In the first seconds of a session buys are near-blocked and sells are not, so the opening prints can only go down. That is the anti-snipe working, and it is a real cost.