Snipe tax and bots

What Pons does

The Pons factory applies a 99% tax for the first 3 seconds of a token's life to every buyer that is not exempt (snipeTaxStartBps = 9900, snipeTaxSeconds = 3, read on the real factory). The launcher and the creator fee recipient are exempt. The flock contract passes itself in snipeTaxExemptions and is also the launcher, so its own buy is untaxed.

What bots can still do

• Buy before the flock: impossible. The token does not exist until the flock's transaction creates it.
• Buy in the same transaction: impossible. It is one call from the flock contract.
• Buy right after, inside the 3 seconds: they get 1% of the tokens their ETH would buy, and the tests check that on a fork.
• Buy after the 3 seconds: yes, and they pay more than the flock did, since the flock already moved the price. A bot can also join the flock itself: then it gets the same price as you, at the same fill.

The flock does not make bots disappear. It removes the one thing that made them first.

The creator

The creator fee recipient is exempt too, so a creator can buy the instant the token exists. That is true of any Pons launch, flock or not. The flock's price is fixed by the curve at the start, so a creator who joins the flock pays the same as everyone; one who buys right after pays more.