The 4 Main Causes of High Slippage (And How to Fix Them)
To fix high slippage, you must first understand its root causes. Here are the four most common issues for new Solana tokens and precise solutions.
- Cause 1: Insufficient Liquidity Pool (LP). A tiny pool relative to token supply means even small trades move the price drastically. Solution: Dedicate a meaningful portion of your launch budget to LP. For a 1,000,000 token supply, pairing with 5-10 SOL in an initial DEX offering (IDO) is a realistic minimum target, not 1-2 SOL.
- Cause 2: Concentrated Sell Pressure. A large portion of the supply held by a few early buyers or the team can be dumped at once. Solution: Implement vesting schedules for team/advisor tokens. Consider a launchpad that uses a bonding curve or gradual distribution to prevent instant mass selling, like the model used on Spawned.
- Cause 3: Poor Token Distribution. If tokens are too concentrated, any sale from a large holder has a massive impact. Solution: Aim for a broader, fairer initial distribution through mechanisms like airdrops to engaged communities or fair launch models that cap initial buy-ins.
- Cause 4: No Ongoing Incentive to Hold. If there's no reason to hold, people sell quickly, constantly draining LP. Solution: Integrate holder rewards. For example, Spawned allocates 0.30% of every trade to holders, creating a direct financial incentive to hold and reduce churn that causes slippage.