Snowball: the meme coin that automates market making (and developers can't run away)

Why Dog Meme Coins Are Attracting Less Attention Now and What’s Changing

The December crypto market is quite apathetic. On-chain activity has slowed down, volumes are decreasing, and in Chinese communities, few still seem interested in new opportunities. Yet, in the English-speaking sphere, an interesting discussion is emerging around a project that challenges the traditional meme coin model: Snowball, launched on pump.fun on December 18. In just four days, it reached a market cap of $10 million, creating a localized wealth effect during a period when even dog meme coins are struggling to capture attention. The Chinese community has not yet discussed it, but that might be the point: Snowball’s mechanism represents an attempt to address a structural problem of traditional meme coins.

How the traditional meme coin lifecycle works (and where it fails)

On pump.fun, anyone can create a token in a few minutes. The creator can set up a “creator fee,” a percentage taken from each transaction that ends up in their wallet. Usually, this percentage ranges from 0.5% to 1%, and theoretically, it should be used to build communities or manage marketing. In practice, the script is almost always the same: the developer accumulates fees until reaching a significant amount, then disappears with the funds. This is the typical lifecycle of shitcoins: launch → growth → fee collection → exit.

Investors are not actually betting on the token’s value itself but on the good faith of its creator. A weak assumption, which often proves wrong.

Snowball’s proposal: turning fees into automatic buy pressure

Snowball tries to rewrite this script. It completely abandons personal creator fees. 100% of the generated fees do not go into anyone’s wallet but are automatically transferred to an on-chain market-making bot that performs three recurring operations:

First: accumulates funds from fees and uses them to buy tokens on the market, creating artificial demand.

Second: adds the purchased tokens and the corresponding amount of SOL to the liquidity pool, increasing market depth.

Third: burns 0.1% of tokens each cycle, introducing a deflationary element.

An additional element: the fee percentage is not static but varies between 0.05% and 0.95% based on market capitalization. When the market cap is still low, the percentage increases to allow the bot to accumulate “ammunition” faster; as capitalization grows, the fee decreases to reduce transaction friction. The theoretical result? An auto-sustaining cycle: transactions → fees → automatic buys → price increase → more transactions attracted → more fees. This is what is called the “snowball effect”: each movement fuels the next.

The numbers after the first four days

Snowball was launched on December 18. After a few days, here is the on-chain snapshot:

• Market cap: from zero to $10 million
• 24h volume: over $11 million
• Number of holder wallets: 7,270 addresses
• Concentration: the top 10 hold about 20% of the supply; the largest single holder has 4.65%
• Total transactions: over 58,000, including 33,000 buys (4.4 million dollars) and 24,000 sells (4.3 million)
• Net flow: approximately $100,000
• Liquidity in the pool: roughly $380,000 (half in tokens, half in SOL)

The distribution is relatively dispersed, with no wallets controlling 20-30% of the supply. Buys and sells are practically balanced, with no dominant selling pressure. Market depth remains limited for this capitalization: large orders could generate significant slippage.

Interestingly, the Alpha exchange announced the listing less than 96 hours after launch, confirming the short-term trend and market interest.

Why the mechanism attracts attention (and why it is still risky)

The English-speaking community appreciates that Snowball is the first meme coin to “freeze” 100% of creator fees within the protocol. Structurally, developers cannot run away with the funds. Everything is public and verifiable on-chain. It’s a security narrative that resonates especially well at a time when trust in meme coin creators is at a low.

But there is a crucial caveat: the security of the mechanism does not equal earning potential. The snowball effect only works if there is enough volume to generate fees that feed the bot. More transactions, more “ammunition” for buybacks, greater buying pressure, higher prices, and more traders entering the market. It’s the ideal scenario but requires an external initial push.

What happens if that push doesn’t come? If volume drops, the bot receives fewer fees, buybacks weaken, price support diminishes, and interest further declines. The flywheel can spin in reverse.

The real limits of the mechanism

The mechanism solves a specific problem: it prevents developers from running away with the funds. But meme coin risks are many: massive dumps by large holders, insufficient liquidity, narrative loss, manipulation. A buyback of 100% of fees is little help if one of these scenarios occurs.

Additionally, the concept of automatic market making through incentivization mechanisms is not new. In 2021, OlympusDAO with its (3.3) model captured tens of billions of dollars, promising that “if no one sells, everyone gains” through a complex game theory applied to staking. It ended with a spiral collapse and over 90% losses. Even earlier, there was Safemoon, with its “taxes on every transaction redistributed to holders” system, also presented as a revolutionary mechanical innovation. It ended with SEC investigations and fraud accusations against the founder.

The mechanism can be a powerful narrative hook, capable of attracting capital in the short term. But it does not create intrinsic value. When external capital flows dry up, even the most sophisticated cycle stalls.

What is really happening in the meme coin market

Snowball and similar projects (like FIREBALL, which adopts a parallel approach) show that the meme coin market is exploring new directions. Traditional hype and community shilling methods are losing effectiveness. The narrative of “structural security through mechanical design” seems to be one of the new strategies. But it’s important to remember: innovative design is a marketing label, not a guarantee of success.

In conclusion: it’s just a meme coin

Snowball turns creator fees into an automatic market maker. The problem it addresses is clear: prevent developers from running away. But solving that problem does not mean you can earn. If you want to participate in this dog meme coin experiment with a new mechanism, remember what it really is: first and foremost, it’s a meme coin, and only secondarily, an interesting mechanical design experiment. Play, but keep your eyes open.