Onchain trading bots — Telegram-integrated tools that let users buy and sell tokens directly from chat — became essential infrastructure for memecoin trading in 2023-2024. These bots solve a real problem: buying a newly launched token on a DEX requires connecting a wallet, navigating to the DEX, pasting the contract address, setting slippage, and confirming the transaction. A bot lets you do all this by sending a single message in Telegram.
Banana Gun emerged as the dominant trading bot on Ethereum, processing billions in cumulative trading volume. Users paste a token contract address into the Telegram bot and it executes the swap instantly, with built-in features like anti-rug protection (detecting honeypot contracts), limit orders, and auto-buy on launch. Banana Gun launched its own token (BANANA) which accrued value from the platform’s trading fees.
BONKbot became the Solana equivalent, dominating memecoin trading on the fastest-growing chain for new token launches. Maestro, Unibot (an early pioneer), Trojan, and dozens of others competed across different chains. The bot wars generated enormous revenue: these platforms typically charge 0.5-1% per transaction, and with billions in volume, the fees were substantial.
The bot ecosystem raised important questions. Security was a constant concern — users had to trust bot operators with their private keys or seed phrases, creating honeypot risks. Several smaller bots exit-scammed or were hacked. Front-running was another issue: some bots were accused of front-running their own users’ transactions. Despite these risks, the convenience was irresistible for active memecoin traders, many of whom executed dozens of trades daily. The trading bot category demonstrated that in crypto, the winning products aren’t always the most decentralized or secure — sometimes they’re simply the fastest and most convenient, meeting users where they already are (Telegram) rather than forcing them to use dedicated interfaces.
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