Being first no longer matters in Solana's (SOL) meme coin market, knowing what to ignore does, according to Reethmos, founder of Trojan, a Telegram-based trading bot that has processed over $28 billion in lifetime volume.
"It's something like 30,000 new tokens a day," he said. "And there is a whole swath of people whose entire model is to just endlessly launch and dump into the first few buyers."
The implication is that being first does not matter if you're early to garbage.
When Speed Mattered
Reethmos traces the shift back to how token launches have changed.
In the Ethereum (ETH) meme coin era, launching a coin required Solidity knowledge and some form of marketing.
Scarcity made timing valuable, being early was a genuine edge.
Solana's infrastructure flipped that.
Launchpads like Pump.fun made token creation trivial. Supply exploded. And with it, the calculus changed.
"The alpha now, if I can call it that, is the ability to filter out a large portion of what's coming into existence," Reethmos said. "Traders who are going to win are the ones who avoid wasting time even looking at most launches."
Building For Noise Reduction
Trojan's response has been to invest heavily in filtering tools, keyword searches, launchpad-specific feeds, and data surfacing designed to cut through the noise without adding latency.
Reethmos claimed they've managed to virtually eliminate the delays that typically come with added filters.
The broader point isn't about Trojan specifically. It's that risk management now starts before execution—at the discovery layer.
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In a market where most launches are designed to extract value from early buyers, avoiding traps matters more than entering faster.
What Still Breaks Traders
Speed may be overrated, but discipline remains underrated.
Reethmos pointed to emotional trading as one of the most persistent failures he sees among retail users, even those with advanced tooling.
Successful traders, he argued, are systems people and when they break their system through FOMO, over-sizing, or revenge-trading, losses follow.
It's part of why Trojan has prioritised automation features like auto-sell, DCA, and copy-trading.
Not for speed, but for consistency. "The more you can automate, the easier it is to eliminate emotion," he said.
Where Infrastructure Still Lags
Asked what parts of on-chain trading remain underbuilt, Reethmos pointed beyond his own domain.
Prediction markets, he said, are still at version 0.5, untested at real scale.
Real-world assets are even earlier, with tokenisation narratives running far ahead of actual trading rails and user education.
"That gap between story and infrastructure is where the biggest opportunities wait," he said.
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