From Biggest Jeet On-Chain to Learning How to Hold

🎙️ GMGN User Stories · Episode 06 · A series where we listen to the people on the other side of the screen talk about how they actually trade.

Episode 06 features Salmane — a degen since 2021, Cets On Creck NFT holder back when it earned him the original $BONK airdrop. He digs his own new pairs, watches which smart accounts are already in, and built a fast-launch sniping flow on that rhythm.

“I used to be one of the biggest jeets on-chain, lol. But once I learned how to hold — that’s when I realized the holders are the ones who actually print.”

— Salmane @_xSalmane

About me

I’m Salmane. Got on-chain back in 2021, during the NFT days.

Was very early on memecoins too. Had a few Cets On Creck NFTs at the time — one of the biggest Solana collections in 2022 — which is how I ended up on the original $BONK airdrop list.

Me and GMGN

About a year on GMGN.

First tried it during the BSC season around October. Chart responsiveness compared to DexScreener is on a different level entirely. Even for plain research, having every relevant link in one place saves a ton of digging.

What I’d complain about

One thing: searching for a ticker on Base, if the coin launched a month ago, the results are mostly fakes — the real one barely shows up, sometimes not at all. Worth fixing. Otherwise, no complaints.

The trade I remember most

End of May, $SURPLUS.

Put 1 ETH in and went to sleep, figuring I’d catch a dip the next day. Woke up already 10x 😅.

Held another day or two, exited around a $5M market cap, locked in roughly $45K.

The other one worth mentioning is from XPL season — I bought $trillions in the first 5 transactions, jeeted at 3x, and fumbled $1.5M on it.

For a long stretch, I struggled badly with holding high-conviction positions. Was honestly one of the biggest jeets on-chain, lol.

Eventually I learned how to hold. And it turns out — most of the time, the people who hold are the ones who actually print.

Take $ATBASH right now. Been holding three weeks, buying dips when I can. Hoping it’s my next six-figure play.

My biggest change

The biggest shift was going from a notorious jeet to someone who can actually sit on a high-conviction position.

Quick in-and-out plays do grind out steady money. But the trades that actually add a zero to your account almost always come from “see it early + hold it through.”

Slowing down is way harder than it sounds.

My personal playbook

GMGN really does make things easier. I focus almost exclusively on new pairs and barely track wallets at all. I do my own digging, and I’ve got a small private group on the side I can ping if I need extra info. But most of the time, I’ve already found what I need.

What I really want to pass on is the rhythm — how to make the fastest decision with the fewest signals when a launch moves too fast to deep-dive.

For the launches that move too fast for real research, my flow is dead simple:

1. Check the dev. Is this dev known? A known dev and an anonymous one aren’t even in the same credibility tier.
2. Check smart followers. Open the Chrome extension Front Run and look up the project’s smart followers — high-quality on-chain accounts already watching it. A project can buy followers, but it can’t buy real smart-account attention. This is basically the filter that matters.
3. If both check out, ape in. If the dev is solid and the smart followers look right, I’m in. No more research.

Speed plus a small set of filters — that’s where most of the lightweight on-chain alpha actually lives.

That’s how I made $80K in May.

“On a chain where launches move this fast, deep research is a luxury. The real edge is making the fastest decision with the fewest signals.”

Salmane’s playbook isn’t really about sniping. It’s about fully accepting the time pressure. When the market moves too fast to research, you compress research into a handful of signals you can read in seconds.

Editor’s note

The part of Salmane’s episode that hit hardest isn’t the $SURPLUS trade he woke up 10x on. It’s how openly he talks about going from jeet to holder.

In meme culture, everyone posts their wins. Almost no one talks about how they used to trade — and what it took to actually unlearn it. Salmane just put it on the table: scalping can pay the bills, but the magnitude jumps almost always come from “see it early + hold it through.”

Who’s this playbook actually for? Traders who already do their own research, don’t lean on copying smart wallets, and can make independent calls inside a fast-moving launch. If you’re already digging into projects yourself and you just lack a “when do I pull the trigger” filter — Salmane’s flow is directly stealable.

This episode’s core thesis runs almost exactly opposite to last episode’s, from Coco.

Coco is a scalper. He argues for taking profits early, staying out of moonboy mode, and lives by “fewer moonshots is better than fewer zeros.” Salmane stands on the other end — scalping is just the daily grind, the real magnitude jumps come from high-conviction holding.

Neither is wrong. They fit different capital sizes, different attention budgets, and different win-rate structures.

• Coco’s approach fits traders still in accumulation mode, optimizing for steady PnL.
• Salmane’s approach fits traders who already have a base position, have their own research game, and have the nerve to size up on a few high-conviction setups.

Read the two episodes side by side and it’s basically a snapshot of two different stages of the meme trader’s path. Which one you actually resemble right now might matter more than which one you agree with.

See you next episode.

— GMGN Team

Risk note: This article is for information and product explanation only and does not constitute investment advice. Memecoin trading is extremely high-risk and can lead to the total loss of your capital. Do your own research and make your own decision before trading. GMGN does not promise, guarantee, or predict any profit or return. Any user gains or case studies mentioned are individual, exceptional, and not representative of typical outcomes or of future performance.