Understand Orbit's contract protections
See which trade shapes the contracts make harder, how the rules are enforced and where their protection ends.
TL;DR
- Orbit does not identify or block bots; the contracts respond to trade impact and token movement instead of guessing who is behind an address.
- Large curve trades can pay an additional impact fee, and tokens received in one block cannot be sold on the curve in that same block.
- The 4× curve and matched graduation price reduce structural advantages, but they do not make a coin safe or guarantee an exit.
Orbit narrows specific opportunities for atomic extraction and manipulation, while leaving ordinary participation open to people and automated traders alike. Each protection has a precise trigger and a limit.
Orbit reads the trade, not the trader
Wallet caps, blocklists and address cooldowns depend on recognising the same actor. A fresh wallet can make that distinction unreliable. Orbit instead applies the same rules to every address: one mechanism reads the price movement caused by a trade, and another records when the tokens reached their current holder.
This means the contracts do not need to label one participant a bot and another a person. The trade shape and token history determine what happens.
Large atomic moves cost more
On the bonding curve, buys and sells above 10% price impact attract an additional surcharge. It rises with the movement caused by that one trade and goes to the protocol side. Exactly 10% computes a zero surcharge; the ramp begins above it.
Splitting an order can keep each trade below the threshold. That limitation is important: the surcharge is aimed at the large atomic move an immediate sandwich requires, not at somebody accumulating over time.
The same-block rule follows the tokens
Every non-zero inbound transfer records the block in which the current holder received those tokens. A curve sell in that same block is rejected.
Moving the tokens to another wallet does not reset the rule. The receiving wallet gets a new stamp for the same block, closing the simple buy in Wallet A, transfer to Wallet B and sell immediately path.
Token provenance
A fresh wallet does not clear the block stamp
For an ordinary holder, the restriction lasts only until a later block. It is not a minimum holding period.
The curve removes part of the prize
Each graduation tier uses the same curve shape: the price travels 4× from the opening point to graduation. A larger early order moves its own average entry against itself as it fills, so being first does not provide an unlimited formula-driven climb.
At graduation, half the collected curve ETH is paired with the reserved 200 million tokens. That ratio opens the pool at the price where the curve ended, removing a built-in price step at the handoff. It does not control what the open pool does afterwards.
Graduated trading rejects unsupported shapes
The graduated pool accepts exact-input trades. An exact-output request is rejected, and a buy that unexpectedly uses only part of its post-fee input is rejected rather than letting the fee maths settle against a different trade shape.
The pool fee for that coin is read and cached at graduation. Fee collection handles WETH rather than accumulating the coin it taxes. Internal buyback paths use a 30-minute time-weighted average price (TWAP) reference and refuse stale, sparse or incomplete history instead of treating it as reliable.
What these protections do not promise
A patient buyer is not stopped. An order can be split, a market can remain shallow and a graduated pool can move sharply. These mechanisms narrow particular attack paths; they do not validate a creator, make a coin a good trade, guarantee liquidity, guarantee a fair price or guarantee that you can exit at the displayed value.
Common questions
Does the same-block rule prove that a wallet is a bot?
No. Same-block provenance follows the tokens and rejects one immediate curve-sell path. It does not infer identity or intent. Know the risks before you trade keeps that mechanism separate from the wider decision.
Can splitting a large order avoid the impact fee?
It can keep individual trades below the threshold, which is why the mechanism is a speed bump for a large atomic move rather than a general accumulation limit. Review the complete quote in Know what your trade will cost.
What should I do if a TWAP-backed action has too little history?
Do not treat a refused action as permission to substitute a spot price. The internal path fails closed when observations are stale, sparse or incomplete; wait for valid history and recheck the action shown by the product.