Introduction

Bots, as automated tools on blockchains, are double-edged swords. On the one hand, bots play a vital role in facilitating users' operations (eg. trading) on diverse platforms and protocols. On the other hand, they are utilized for numerous forms of fraud and malicious actions.

Distinguishing between 'good' bots (that perform useful or helpful tasks) and 'bad' bots (that aren't detrimental to users' experiences and interests) is a difficult task. However, to tackle bad bots' effects, their actions can be prevented or at least be made a costly act. The strategy of making the operation of bots costly has been used by Candy Machine.

Candy Machine is a tool for minting NFTs on Solana. The machine has recently caused the Solana downtime due to the intense botting of an NFT mint on its platform. To deal with the issue Candy Machine has introduced a new system that penalizes using bots for minting.

This dashboard evaluates the Candy Machine's countermeasure that has been recently implemented for using bots on Solana.

Results

The graph below shows the daily number of bot transactions that have been penalized over time. We can see that on April 30th, the first they after the countermeasure was implemented, the number of penalized transactions is at by far the highest level.

Some wallets got penalized more than the other. The graph below displays the number of transactions that are penalized per wallets.

The box below shows how much in total SOL has Metaplex captured so far.

The graph below shows the top 10 wallets in terms of number of penalized transactions. These wallets can be guilty of botting the network.

Conclusion

The data shows that after implementation of the new system for preventing botting on Candy Machine, the number of botting have been decreased remarkably and sharply.