Seven on-chain warning signs to check before you buy
A rug pull is a scam in which the creators of a token abruptly remove its value — by withdrawing liquidity, minting and dumping new supply, or selling a concentrated holding — leaving buyers with tokens they cannot sell for anything meaningful. On Solana, where launching a token takes seconds and costs almost nothing, rug pulls are the single most common way traders lose money on new tokens.
The good news is that most rug pulls leave visible fingerprints on-chain before they happen. The permissions a token was deployed with, the state of its liquidity pool, and the way supply and volume are distributed are all public. You do not need insider knowledge to check them — you need to know where to look.
Each type depends on a specific precondition. That is why checking those preconditions is so effective: if none of them is present, the most common rug mechanisms are simply unavailable.
If the creator still holds mint authority, they can create new tokens at will and dump them into the pool. This dilutes every holder and drains SOL from liquidity without ever touching the LP. On a legitimate community token, mint authority is normally revoked shortly after launch.
Unlocked LP means the creator can redeem their LP tokens and withdraw the entire pool in one transaction. This is the classic liquidity pull. Look for LP that is burned or locked in a time-lock contract with a meaningful duration.
When a handful of wallets — often the creator and wallets they funded — hold most of the supply, they can sell into the pool at once and crash the price. If the top 10 holders control 80% or more of supply (excluding the pool itself), the token is fragile by design.
A sudden surge in volume without matching growth in unique holders often means wash trading: the same wallets buying and selling to themselves to fake activity and lure buyers onto trending lists. Compare volume to holder count and to liquidity — volume many times larger than liquidity is a warning.
Freeze authority allows the creator to freeze individual token accounts so they cannot sell. It enables honeypot behavior and can be used to trap large holders while the creator exits.
Anonymity is common in crypto and not proof of fraud, but an anonymous deployer wallet that was freshly funded, has launched many short-lived tokens, or has no history at all removes any reputational cost to rugging.
Most rug pulls happen within minutes to hours of launch. A token that is a few minutes old with only a few thousand dollars of liquidity has had no time to prove anything and costs very little to abandon.
No single signal is decisive. Plenty of legitimate tokens launch with freeze authority enabled by default, and plenty of rugs happen on tokens with revoked mint authority. What matters is the combination. A token with unlocked LP, enabled mint authority, and 90% of supply in five wallets has every tool needed for a rug pull in the creator's hands. A token with burned LP, both authorities revoked, and hundreds of holders has removed most of them.
Pay particular attention to tokens that look healthy on one axis but suspicious on another — for example, huge volume on a token with tiny liquidity and few holders. That mismatch is often the clearest sign that activity is manufactured.
The Trust Score on this platform is built to surface exactly these preconditions automatically. For every scanned token it checks:
Each risk factor deducts points from a 0–100 score and appears as a risk flag on the token page. The full breakdown of each flag is in Solana token risk flags explained. A high score does not guarantee a token is safe — it means the common rug mechanisms are not visibly available — but a low score is a strong reason to look closer or walk away.
You can browse tokens that are currently attracting attention on the trending tokens page, which shows these signals alongside each listing. Trending tokens are exactly where rug pullers try to place their launches, so the checks matter most there.
The main mechanisms are removed, but concentrated holders can still dump. Holder distribution remains important even when permissions are clean.
No. Many tokens simply lose interest and decline. A rug pull is a deliberate extraction of value by insiders, usually in one or a few transactions.
Yes. All of the data is public on-chain, and the scanner on this site shows it for free.