Root + Impact

Description

• The protocol is intended to prevent excessive selling during token launches by enforcing limits, cooldowns, and penalty fees on sell-side swaps in early phases.

• The hook applies swap limits and penalties to all swaps, without distinguishing between buy and sell directions. As a result, buy transactions are treated the same as sells and can incorrectly trigger penalties.

The swap amount is always treated as a positive value, and no logic checks whether the swap represents a sell of the launched token. This causes legitimate buy activity to count toward per-address limits and cooldowns.

Risk

Likelihood:

• The issue occurs for every buy swap during phase 1 and phase 2.

• No directional checks exist to exempt buy-side swaps from penalties.

Impact:

• Legitimate buyers can be penalized or charged excessive fees.

• Early demand is artificially suppressed during launch.

• Price discovery becomes distorted, undermining the fairness of the launch process.

Proof of Concept

No tests assert that buy swaps should be penalized, and the project documentation only references penalties for excessive selling.

Recommended Mitigation

Explicitly distinguish between buy and sell swaps and only apply limits and penalties to sell-side activity.

Alternatively, bypass anti-bot enforcement entirely for buy-side swaps.