§ 04 — Methodology
Four checks, their limits, and nothing more.
A dossier starts from the top 12 holders of one token at one slot. The engine reads their public history, applies the checks below and writes what it finds. It describes linkage between wallets; it says nothing about who controls them or why.
Which tokens get a dossier
Candidates are recent Pump.fun launches that the tracker has already measured. The publisher takes them newest signal first, at most five per run, every six hours, and skips a token that already has a dossier from the last seven days. The selection never depends on the result: a launch with no linkage gets a dossier just as one with high linkage does. Not every launch is covered.
The checks
- Shared funding source
For each top holder the engine follows the transfer that first brought SOL into the wallet. When several top holders were funded by the same address, they form a group.
- Bought in the same slot
A slot is Solana’s smallest time unit (well under a second). Several top holders whose first purchase landed in the same slot form a group; purchases within the first slots after creation are noted as such.
- Equal holdings
Top holders whose balances lie within a narrow ratio of each other form a group. Identical amounts are rare by chance among the largest holders.
- Common counterparty
Wallets that transacted with the same intermediate address within a short time span. Recorded as context: it is not a group on its own and does not count toward the linkage level.
The linkage level
The share of supply held by top holders that appear in at least one group decides the label: below the first threshold it is low linkage, between the two thresholds medium linkage, at or above the second high linkage. Thresholds used: 5 / 10% of supply. The label is a summary of measurements, not a rating of the token or its holders.
Limits
- False positives. Unrelated people can share a funding source, buy in the same slot or hold similar amounts. A group is a pattern in public data, nothing more.
- Exchange hubs. Many wallets are funded from exchange hot wallets. Known exchange addresses are excluded as funding sources (listed in each dossier’s method params); addresses that are not yet known can still create groups that only reflect a shared exchange.
- Snapshot. A dossier reflects one slot. Holders change; a later snapshot can look different.
- Top holders only. Wallets outside the top 12 are not analysed, and pool or program accounts may appear among the holders.
- Data source. Public RPC responses are recorded and hashed with the dossier. If the source returned incomplete history, the result reflects that.
Reproducibility
Every dossier ships with its recorded inputs, the engine version and a reproduce command. Re-running it rebuilds the dossier byte for byte; the signature then shows the file is the one that was published. See Verify.