Rug & Honeypot Detection: The 90-Second Safety Check

Everyone chases the next 100×. The traders who actually keep their gains obsess over the opposite skill: never holding the rug. Here is a concrete, on-chain checklist you can run in about 90 seconds — or automate into a pre-buy gate that never lets you fat-finger a honeypot.

1. Authority checks (10 seconds, non-negotiable)

Read the SPL mint account. Two fields decide whether the rules can be changed on you:

• Mint authority must be null — otherwise the team can print unlimited new supply and dilute you to zero.
• Freeze authority must be null — otherwise they can freeze your token account so you can never sell (a classic honeypot).

import { getMint } from "@solana/spl-token";
const m = await getMint(conn, new PublicKey(mint));
const safe = m.mintAuthority === null && m.freezeAuthority === null;

2. Liquidity (post-migration)

• Is there real liquidity in the pool, and is the LP burned or locked? Unlocked LP the dev can pull is the textbook rug.
• Check pool reserves vs. market cap — thin liquidity under a big “market cap” means the cap is a curve artifact you can’t actually exit at.

3. Holder concentration

4. Sellability / honeypot simulation

The definitive test: can the token actually be sold? Simulate a sell (a quote + a simulateTransaction) and look for reverts, absurd transfer taxes, or hooks that block the transfer. If a buy succeeds but a simulated sell fails, it’s a honeypot — walk away regardless of how the chart looks.

5. Dev history (the tell most people skip)

Read the creator off the bonding curve (see the on-chain reading lesson), then look at that wallet’s past deployments. A wallet with ten prior tokens that all went to zero within hours is a serial rugger — the pattern is public and permanent.

The gate, in one place

FAQ