Ten checks to run before buying any new token
New Solana tokens launch by the thousands every day. A small number turn into real communities; a large number are abandoned within hours; and a meaningful share are built to extract money from buyers. You cannot predict which tokens will succeed, but you can reliably filter out many of the ones designed to fail you. That is what due diligence is for.
This checklist covers the ten on-chain checks that matter most. Every item is verifiable from public blockchain data, and every item can be checked for free in a couple of minutes. It is educational, not financial advice — passing every check reduces risk, it does not eliminate it.
Liquidity is the value held in the token's DEX pool. Below about $5k, even small trades move the price sharply, exits are difficult, and the chart is trivially easy to manipulate. Treat $5k as an absolute floor and prefer $50k or more for anything beyond a tiny speculative position.
If the creator holds unlocked LP tokens, they can withdraw the entire pool in one transaction — the classic rug pull. Look for LP that is burned (permanent) or locked in a time-lock contract with a meaningful duration. A lock that expires in hours offers almost no protection.
Enabled mint authority lets the creator create unlimited new tokens and sell them into the pool, diluting every holder. For community tokens, mint authority should be revoked. If it is still enabled, ask why — and assume the worst for anonymous launches.
Enabled freeze authority lets the creator freeze any holder's account so it cannot sell — the core mechanism of Solana honeypots. Revoked freeze authority removes that risk permanently.
If the top 10 holders (excluding the liquidity pool) control more than 80% of supply, a few wallets can crash the price at will. Lower concentration means a more resilient market. Watch for clusters of wallets funded from the same source — they may be one entity.
A token with only a handful of holders has not yet attracted a real market. Above roughly 50 unique holders, distribution starts to mean something. Holder growth over time is even more informative than the absolute number.
Daily volume many times larger than liquidity is a classic sign of wash trading — the same wallets trading back and forth to fake activity. A ratio under 10× is generally consistent with organic trading; far above it warrants suspicion.
Healthy markets have both buyers and sellers. A balanced or modestly buy-heavy ratio is normal. Almost no sells may indicate a honeypot; overwhelming sells indicate insiders or early buyers exiting. Look at transaction counts and unique wallets, not just volume.
A large share of rug pulls happen within the first minutes after launch. Waiting at least 15 minutes lets you see whether liquidity stays, whether authorities get revoked, and whether trading looks organic. Being early is rarely worth being rugged.
The Trust Score combines the checks above into a single 0–100 number, with risk flags explaining every deduction. It is a fast way to confirm you have not missed anything — but read the flags, not just the number.
Items 2, 3 and 4 are permission checks: they tell you what the creator is able to do. If any of them fails, the creator retains a direct way to take value from holders, and no amount of good-looking chart action changes that. Many traders treat these three as hard requirements.
Items 1, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are market-structure checks: they tell you whether the trading activity is real and whether the market is resilient. These are more about degree than pass/fail — a token with $8k liquidity and 60 holders is fragile but not necessarily malicious.
Item 9 is about patience, and item 10 is a cross-check. If your own reading and the Trust Score disagree, look at the risk flags to understand why.
Individual failures are warnings. Combinations are much stronger signals:
For the full list of mechanisms behind these risks, read how to spot a rug pull on Solana and Solana token risk flags explained.
On-chain checks cannot tell you whether a project will deliver on its promises, whether a team is honest, or whether interest will last. A token can pass every check and still go to zero because nobody wants it. The checklist protects you from the most common structural traps, not from market risk. Size positions accordingly.
The token scanner shows liquidity, LP status, mint and freeze authority, holder data, volume, buy/sell activity, token age, and Trust Score for every token it tracks — covering all ten checks in one view. Use it as a starting point, then dig into any flag that looks off.