🖥️Why Choose Webapp?
SaaS Bots: Browser vs Desktop
NFT Bots
All NFT bots have two main components; speed and security. To be more specific, when sniping, minting, or bidding, the focus is on opportunity identification and execution. At NFT Sensei our aim is to optimise both of these factors in our bots.
Opportunity identification for sniping is very computationally cheap. You’re simply waiting for an event, like a time trigger to mint, a transaction on the blockchain, or a listing to appear. Browser apps use JavaScript (JS), which compiles down to machine code (with the V8 engine), and is very suited for this. Desktop apps can use a range of different languages to achieve this, each with differing suitabilities.
Executing mints, trades, and bids is where the difference between good and bad bots gets more scrutinising. This is the component of bot automation that affects the user directly through reallocating their funds, from ETH to NFTs. Hence, security is of vital importance here. It is also needless to say that achieving the best speed in the execution phase will ultimately secure you the win and should also be a priority.
Speed
Executing an NFT opportunity means sending a transaction to a node, via the internet. For the most efficient sniping you want to minimise the processing time of receiving and sending transactions.
Make no mistake, browser applications are fast. Your browser is a piece of software that has been developed and refined over decades by the most gigabrain programmers. And, it’s been built with one overarching goal in mind; to send and receive data to and from the internet, FAST. But how does it compare to desktop applications?
Unfortunately an NFT bot’s speed cannot be determined by its medium alone. This is because there is an insane level of variation between the implementation of apps. While it’s true that some languages operate faster than others, at the end of the day a poorly implemented algorithm in a fast programming language will be slower than a super optimised algorithm in a slower language. While we can’t pass judgement on the implementation of every bot in the market, we can on the languages used to build them. Hence, we have provided a quick breakdown of the general expected speed of different kinds of desktop and browser bots:
Desktop Bots
Most desktop bots on the market are written using a technology called Electron. Electron is a software framework that is powered by Chrome and runs on Node.JS, making it similar to browser bots (in terms of speed). Another variant of a desktop bot is called a Command Line Interface (CLI) bot. These run through your command line or terminal (Mac users) and aren’t common. The CLI bots we have seen are usually written in Node.JS, but they could be written in C, C++, or even Python.
Electron/Node.JS bots
Written in JavaScript (JS)
Medium level of difficulty to code and maintain
Run on Chrome V8 (same runtime engine as most browsers)
Hence equally as fast as your browser
C/C++ bots
Can theoretically be faster than a JS bot
Hard to code and to maintain
Personally haven’t seen any C/C++ SaaS bot offering
Python bots
Just straight up slower than JavaScript running on V8
Friendliest to code and maintain
NGMI
If anyone can show us a CLI bot faster than ours, @Zion#2496 will certify your expertise but may pity your time sink 😛 🥲
Browser Bots
All browser bots will be written in JS. Essentially, this gives them all the same speed qualities as an Electron-based bot.
It is important to remember that factors like block time and internet speed are also influential components of fast sniping. While these are largely out of your immediate control, they should be considered and addressed nonetheless. (make sure you have fast internet!)
However, this whole discussion of theoretical speed is ignoring the elephant in the room. No matter how fast your bot might be, a speed increase at the expense of your user experience, and more importantly your security, is never worth it.
Security
As unfortunate as it is, the reality of the NFT space is that scams are rampant. We have all heard of the rug pulls and probably get regular spam messages on Discord. This is why it is so important to understand the technology you’re using, and to mitigate your risks. You can do this by turning your Discord DMs off, only using #official_links, never giving out your seed phrase, DYOR, and by utilising the most secure technologies available.
Desktop Bots
The proposition of downloading software or running CLI scripts on your computer should send alarm bells ringing. Anything you download on your computer, including updates, presents a new opportunity for an infected binary download. On top of this, you may be able to inspect your network activity easily on the bot only if its an Electron-based bot. Being able to directly look at your network activity is important for ensuring your private information isn't getting unknowingly siphoned. So for the theoretically fastest bots, they could corrupt your files at any time without you catching it. This is a risk we do not recommend you taking.
Additionally, all desktop bots need to know your private key. This is because they cannot leverage any wallet providers. Such a structure limits optionality and takes away your agency. Moreover, a desktop-based bot will be storing this information on your local computer. This may seem like a safe option as it is your computer, but the reality is that most people have poor personal security hygiene.
Browser Bots
Your browser is secure. As they are publicly and privately used by billions of users across multiple industries, a lot of effort has gone into their cyber security. The most popular browser, Google Chrome, has gone through countless hours of testing to make it one of the most secure pieces of software on any computer. This is a far cry from any newly developed NFT desktop app. So what about browser bots then?
With browser bots you have the option to not supply any private keys at ALL. Browser based bots can leverage existing wallet providers to sign in and send transactions. This provides ultimate security as the website owners wouldn’t store your information at all. However if you were to provide your private key, through your browser it is easy to cryptographically guard the storage behind a pass phrase. Additionally, there will be no potentially malicious downloads at all. And most importantly to us, you will always be able to inspect your network activity for ultimate transparency.
Transparency
Desktop based bots are often a black box. You put your private key into them and you can’t necessarily see what they’re doing with it. In a browser, you can always inspect every single bit of network activity within 3 clicks. If you’re on your PC, you can do it now. Right click > click Inspect Element (or Inspect) > go to the Network tab. To learn more check out https://docs.nftsensei.xyz/education/ghost.
Updates
Updating a browser-based bot is quite literally seamless. You just need to refresh your page. Desktop apps require frequent updates that you must download. Not only is this tedious, but with every download you take on more risk.
Special features
Signature bypasses, proxy management, and web hooks can be done from the browser too. We have a powerful and configurable mint bot and bid bot, directly from your browser.
Summary
Now if you didn’t read all of that, no worries. We got a TL;DR for you:
For the same speed, you sacrifice security, transparency, optionality, and UX with desktop bots. Browser-based bots are the way to go.
TL;DR Table
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