Early on-chain trading was pure chaos. No terminals, no launchpads—just sitting in Telegram watching dev wallets move test transactions around at 3am, waiting for launch signals.
You'd manually parse unverified contracts on Etherscan with your crew, hunting for mint functions, blacklists, and hidden fees. Set slippage to 15%, burn $300 in gas, ape in—then discover it's a honeypot when you try to sell.
Being early meant being sleep-deprived. The tooling sucked but the raw energy was unmatched. Modern infrastructure is better but that era had a different vibe.
You'd manually parse unverified contracts on Etherscan with your crew, hunting for mint functions, blacklists, and hidden fees. Set slippage to 15%, burn $300 in gas, ape in—then discover it's a honeypot when you try to sell.
Being early meant being sleep-deprived. The tooling sucked but the raw energy was unmatched. Modern infrastructure is better but that era had a different vibe.