Who is the trading tool that can benefit from both bull and bear markets? A deep analysis of TG, AI agents, and the winning strategies of DEX/CEX Bots.

Compiled by: Tim,

The crypto market has witnessed a significant adoption of automated trading solutions, with trading bots becoming increasingly prominent due to their ability to analyze vast amounts of data and execute trades with precision.

This article delves into the performance of historical trading bots in terms of returns and the dramatic fluctuations in token prices. By backtesting and comparing strategy returns against a "buy and hold" benchmark, it decodes which bots performed outstandingly during specific market cycles and their optimal timing, thereby helping you accurately match the best trading bots according to your investment style and risk tolerance.

This article studies three types of trading bots: Telegram-based DEX trading bots; non-Telegram bots trading on DEXs and centralized exchanges; and the recently evolving AI agent bots.

Choosing the right trading robot requires considering the user's goals, risk tolerance, and experience.

In short:

Telegram bots are very suitable for token issuances and meme coins, as they require quick responses and the ability to seize opportunistic trading scenarios.

Artificial intelligence agent robots (such as ai16z or Virtuals) are suitable for users who wish to achieve fully automated operations and are willing to experiment with experimental strategies.

Centralized exchange bots provide maximum control, making them particularly suitable for implementing structured strategies such as Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA), grid trading, or signal-based trading.

Robot Trading Strategies and Performance

Trading bots are complex automated systems that analyze cryptocurrency market data through algorithms and autonomously execute trades on centralized exchanges or decentralized platforms. These systems typically operate 24/7, requiring almost no human intervention. Their core functionality lies in analyzing vast amounts of real-time and historical market data, including price fluctuations, trading volumes, and key indicators such as order book information.

Using AI trading bots has many potential advantages. Their continuous operation ensures that no trading opportunities are missed, as these bots can monitor the market around the clock and adapt to the dynamic changes of the global market. Some platforms offering such bots also have backtesting features, allowing users to evaluate the potential effectiveness of different trading strategies through historical data before investing real money for actual trading.

Telegram DEX Bot

Telegram trading bots operate on the Telegram platform, leveraging its convenience and real-time communication advantages to execute trades directly on decentralized exchanges. These bots typically focus on improving trading speed and sniping new tokens, particularly attracting users from ecosystems like Solana. The newly launched protocols also integrate common features of centralized exchange trading bots, such as grid trading, dollar-cost averaging (DCA), and limit order strategy tools.

Telegram bots, such as Maestro and Unibot, first appeared around 2020 to 2021. By 2022, many of these bots had begun to offer advanced features, such as copy trading and arbitrage.

By the end of 2023, trading robots based on the Solana chain (such as BONKBot and Trojan Bot) have gained significant attention for their ability to execute quick trades of Meme coins on decentralized exchanges. The biggest advantage of these Telegram bots is that users can complete transactions directly on their mobile devices without needing to connect their wallets through a browser extension. This feature greatly enhances the ease of use for mobile trading, while also strengthening market monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with social networks.

Based on historical trading volume, the top five Telegram bots in cross-blockchain platforms are Trojan, BonkBot, Maestro, Banana Gun, and Sol Trading Bot. In the past 90 days, the vast majority of trading volume occurred on the Solana blockchain, and all five of these top Telegram bots operate on the Solana chain.

Battle of DEX Trading Bots Source: Dune Analytics

The functions provided by the Telegram bots are very similar, with the difference being that some of them (such as Maestro and Banana Gun) focus on multi-chain operations, while the others focus on the Solana chain.

The main purpose of Telegram bots is to automatically identify profitable entry and exit points for trades and execute them quickly. However, due to the difficulty in tracking individual user profits and losses for each trade, some Telegram bots (such as Banana Gun and BonkBot) use a revenue-sharing model tied to their tokens, whereby they use the 1% fee collected to buy back their own tokens. This makes the token price and protocol revenue (the fees collected) approximate indicators for measuring the market performance of trading bots.

Daily revenue (USD) of the Telegram bot Source: Dune Dashboard

The proportion of daily income to total income Source: Dune Dashboard

Income Situation of Telegram DEX Bots in the Past 6 Months

In terms of overall revenue over the past six months, Trojan had the highest nominal fee amount (approximately $109 million), while the Sol Trading Bot performed best in terms of the median daily revenue when daily income was normalized by total revenue.

They all peaked around the Meme coin boom period in January 2025, but are currently facing a sharp decline in returns due to the broader market downturn.

Daily token price change percentage Source: Dune Analytics

Price Performance of BANANA and BONK Tokens

The price trends over the past six months show that, apart from the significant rise of the BONK token in November 2024, the remaining parts of the Banana Gun and BonkBot Telegram bots, which share token profits, have performed very similarly. In the recent bearish market environment, both have experienced a sharp decline in price.

AI Agent Robot

AI trading bots are highly sophisticated automated systems that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to analyze cryptocurrency market data and execute trades autonomously.

The term "intelligent agent" indicates that this type of robot possesses a certain level of autonomy and decision-making ability, surpassing the fixed-rule operating methods of traditional automated trading systems. Currently, the most well-known AI agent frameworks are Virtuals and ai16z.

AI Agent Robot Comparison

Virtuals Protocol will launch on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Base in October 2024. It is an AI agent generation platform aimed at simplifying the creation and deployment process of AI agents on the blockchain. Although the protocol is not specifically designed for trading, its platform supports the development of AI agents that may be used for trading purposes. For example, the experimental AI agent Aixbt on the platform can track trending discussions on social media X and identify potential market signals by analyzing user conversations, thereby generating strategic recommendations that can assist in trading decisions.

Due to the Virtuals protocol adopting a LaunchPad model, where various agents (such as LUNA and AIXBT) are issued in the form of independent tokens and operate in various fields such as gaming, trading, and entertainment, we will focus on analyzing the market performance of the trading agent token with the largest market cap on this platform: AIXBT.

AIXBT Price History Source: CoinMarketCap

Ai16z is an AI-driven trading fund operating on the Solana blockchain. Launched in October 2024, the fund utilizes complex AI agents built on the Eliza framework to autonomously analyze market information such as price fluctuations, social media sentiment, and on-chain data, and to automatically execute trading decisions.

The fund operates in the form of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), allowing its native token holders to participate in key decision-making governance through voting, and to influence trading strategies via a "virtual trust market." The virtual fund manager AI Marc, built on the Eliza framework, is responsible for managing fund trading activities. The AI16Z token represents ownership of the fund and grants governance rights, with the operations of its agents directly impacting the value of the tokens.

AI16Z Price History Source: CoinMarketCap

By comparing the trading volume data of these two agents, it can be observed that both peaked in January 2025, with AI16Z's trading volume at $501 million, while AIXBT set a higher record with $682 million in trading volume. It is worth noting that the price peak of AI16Z occurred slightly earlier than its trading volume peak, while the price and trading volume peaks of AIXBT were basically synchronized during the same period, indicating a closer correlation between the two in terms of time.

Comparison of prices and trading volumes of AI16Z and AIXBT. Source: CoinMarketCap

Performance of AI16Z and AIXBT Prices

The price performance of AIXBT is more impressive than that of AI16Z. During the peak period in November 2024, its token price skyrocketed nearly 4000 times compared to the initial issuance price, while AI16Z only reached about 111 times increase during the same period. Even after experiencing a decline recently and with the overall market in a downward trend, the latest price record as of the end of March 2025 shows that AIXBT still maintains a 478 times increase from its initial price, while AI16Z remains at a level of 6.8 times.

DEX/CEX Bot

These platforms are built on the network and operate independently of Telegram. Users can trade directly on the DEX by connecting their wallets, or they can interface with the CEX via API or simple login methods. These features are all part of the integrated exchange solutions of the platform.

These web-based platforms offer a wide range of strategy options and broader market access channels, while simultaneously accommodating user demands for CEX liquidity and reliability, as well as the non-custodial and decentralized characteristics of DEXs in their functional design. Some platforms also support quick switching between DEX and CEX with a one-click operation, making it easier to capture price differences between centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges (i.e., CEX-DEX arbitrage opportunities).

The most common strategies on these platforms include grid trading, dollar-cost averaging, and signal bots. Dollar-cost averaging bots invest a fixed amount of funds into cryptocurrencies at regular time intervals, regardless of how the asset price fluctuates. The core idea of this strategy is to spread entry points over time dimensions, thereby reducing the impact of market volatility. Such strategies often perform exceptionally well in markets where prices show a clear trend.

The grid trading robot is designed for active trading, profiting from price fluctuations through a structured low-buy high-sell strategy. This robot will place a series of limit buy and sell orders at set intervals above and below the pre-defined price range, thus creating an order "grid". Each completed low-buy high-sell cycle will generate returns, and this strategy performs best in a sideways and highly volatile market.

Signal trading bots execute trades based on external signals, which typically come from technical indicators, market analysis, or third-party services. Common signal indicators include the Relative Strength Index (RSI), Exponential Moving Average (EMA), and Bollinger Bands.

Comparison of Different DEX/CEX Strategies

The following table shows the historical performance of the three trading pairs BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, and SOL/USDT under three trading strategies. Among them, the parameter selection for the grid trading bot uses the AI optimization feature built into the 3Commas platform to automatically select the best parameters; for the dollar-cost averaging method, the most popular classic trading strategy among users of the platform is used.

For signal bots, Dash2Trade offers a strategy preset feature, which automatically selects the best strategy for each token. These strategies are validated through historical backtesting based on a self-developed trading system and have been applied to real market trading, but the validity of the strategies is limited to a trading period of 120 days prior to January 26, 2025.

Due to the lack of consistent and available data across platforms, we adopted three backtesting periods for each strategy. The table below shows the simple price movement during the corresponding periods, which also represents the return rate of a simple buy-and-hold strategy.

DEX/CEX Bot Strategy Price Fluctuation

Existing data indicates that the performance of trading robots may vary significantly, depending on the specific trading robot used, the trading strategy employed, and the market conditions at the time of backtesting.

Bitcoin and Ethereum price Data source: CoinMarketCap

During the 120-day backtesting period from September 26, 2024, to January 26, 2025, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana all showed an upward trend, with buy-and-hold returns of 58%, 23%, and 55%, respectively. During this period, the performance of the signal robot's strategy was roughly on par with the buy-and-hold strategy (with some cryptocurrencies slightly underperforming), specifically: Bitcoin strategy return of 58.15%, Ethereum strategy 16.79%, and Solana strategy 48.68%.

During the same 120-day period from December 4, 2024, to April 4, 2025 (during which the grid bot strategy was backtested), the market prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana showed a downward trend, with the buy-and-hold strategy return rates being -16%, -53%, and -49%, respectively. This is in stark contrast to the market environment of the previous 120-day backtest period. In a clearly declining trend with significant market volatility, the performance of the grid bot strategy significantly outperformed the buy-and-hold strategy, generating positive returns of 9.6% for BTC, 10.4% for ETH, and 21.88% for SOL.

Bitcoin and Solana price data source: CoinMarketCap

During the longest backtesting period of 180 days from October 4, 2024, to April 4, 2025, the return rates of the buy-and-hold strategy for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana were 34%, -25%, and -18%, respectively, when backtesting the dollar-cost averaging robot. In stark contrast, the performance of the signal robot's strategy for these three tokens was vastly different from the buy-and-hold strategy.

For Bitcoin, using a DCA bot achieved a return rate of 17.75%, which underperformed compared to a one-time buy-and-hold strategy. However, the DCA returns for Ethereum (ETH, 58.12%) and Solana (SOL, 80.92%) significantly outperformed one-time investments. This disparity may stem from the fact that ETH and SOL experienced significantly higher volatility than BTC during the statistical period, while the DCA strategy effectively reduced timing risk by investing funds in batches and diversifying entry prices.

Trading Robot Performance Comparison

In the past six months, DEX robots such as Trojan and Sol Trading Bot have dominated in terms of revenue performance. Among them, Trojan generated approximately $109 million in fee income, while Sol Trading Bot stood out for its stable daily returns relative to its scale.

However, the income of all trading bots peaked during the Meme coin frenzy in January 2025, followed by a slowdown due to weak market sentiment. Bots tied to tokens (such as BANANA and BONK) also showed a similar trend, experiencing a brief surge (especially BONK's notable performance in November 2024) before a significant decline influenced by the overall market trend.

The artificial intelligence agency robot market has shown explosive growth during the same period. Among them, the price of the AIXBT token reached a maximum of 4000 times its issuance price, far exceeding that of AI16Z (111 times). Even after experiencing a market correction, AIXBT still remains at 478 times its issuance price, while AI16Z has fallen back to 6.8 times. In terms of trading volume, both reached their peak in January 2025, but the price of the AIXBT token and trading volume grew in tandem, indicating strong speculative buying momentum.

CEX/DEX signals, grid trading, and dollar-cost averaging robots demonstrate the importance of market conditions, and there is a significant difference in performance between these strategies and buy-and-hold strategies.

In a rising market environment (backtesting period from September 2024 to January 2025), the signal robot's performance is close to a buy-and-hold strategy, but the returns are slightly lower or comparable.

The grid robot performs excellently in a downtrend and high volatility environment (from December 2024 to April 2025), significantly outperforming the buy-and-hold strategy, turning negative market returns into double-digit positive returns.

During the 180-day backtest period (from October 2024 to April 2025), the performance of the DCA robot showed significant differentiation: while the dollar-cost averaging strategy underperformed the simple buy-and-hold strategy for Bitcoin, it significantly outperformed for Ethereum and SOL. This is likely due to the strategy's ability to absorb market volatility and its advantage in volatility arbitrage.

Key Points

We delve into the wild world of AI-driven cryptocurrency trading robots: a comparison of Telegram-based decentralized exchange bots, AI agent trading bots, and DEX/CEX bots. Each type of bot is a unique tool tailored for different traders and market conditions.

The Telegram DEX bot is designed with ease of use at its core, featuring a simple interface directly embedded in the Telegram app. These bots focus on Meme coin trading and participation in on-chain token issuance, primarily attracting investors and Meme coin enthusiasts who are proficient in mobile operations and seek quick transactions. Key features include socialized copy trading and a token dividend incentive mechanism, deeply integrating community attributes to meet users' needs for instant trading and social collaboration.

In the past six months, the Telegram DEX bot has generated considerable revenue, peaking during the Meme coin season in January 2025. However, among these projects, only the BANANA and BONK tokens shared profits with users. Recently, in the bear market environment, both tokens have experienced significant price declines, with the BONK token plummeting 90% within three months, and the market value of the BANANA token shrinking to less than one-third of its peak period. Data shows that although the overall trading volume in the DEX bot sector remains active, the sustainability of the token economic model is facing severe challenges.

AI agent robots lower the threshold for user participation in governance (e.g., the DAO model of AI16Z) or implementing sentiment-driven strategies (e.g., the X analysis of AIXBT) through natural language interfaces and AI decision-making capabilities. Their core advantage lies in the ability to abstract complex trading strategies through conversational interfaces.

Despite the explosive growth in the token prices of AI agent robots, the recent downward trend in the market has led to a decrease in trading activity and a drop in token prices. As a more experimental field, AI agent robots are still in the development stage, making them most suitable for users who are curious about technology or seeking solutions that combine convenience and automation.

Trading bots operating on DEX and CEX provide a variety of strategies through web platforms, making them more suitable for experienced traders who require high-speed execution, access to multiple exchanges, high liquidity, and complex configuration capabilities. Backtesting data shows that signal bots yield returns comparable to buy-and-hold strategies during bull markets, grid bots perform exceptionally well in volatile downward markets, and for high-volatility assets, dollar-cost averaging bots can achieve returns that surpass buy-and-hold strategies.