How do you check if a token is a rug pull before you buy?

Before you buy, confirm the exact contract address, then check four things: whether the pool’s liquidity is locked or burned, whether anyone can still mint or freeze the token, how much of the supply the top wallets hold, and whether a small sell actually goes through at a normal tax. No single check proves a token is honest.

Last reviewed: 6 November 2026

These guides and the DegenPass trust score are measurements, not investment advice: no check can prove a token is honest, and none can predict its price.

What is a rug pull?

A rug pull is when the people behind a token take the value out and leave buyers holding something they cannot sell for anything. It usually happens in one of three ways: the creator removes the liquidity from the trading pool, the creator mints a large amount of new tokens and sells them into the pool, or the contract is written so that ordinary holders cannot sell while insiders can.

All three leave traces on-chain before they happen, and the checks below read those traces.

How to check a token yourself, step by step

  1. Confirm the exact contract address

    Copy the address from the project’s official website and match it against a second official channel, such as its verified X account. Paste it into a block explorer — Etherscan, BscScan or Basescan on EVM networks, Solscan on Solana — instead of searching by name: copies with the same name and ticker are common.

  2. Check the liquidity pool

    Open the token on DexScreener or GeckoTerminal and find its main pool. Note how much money is in it and how old it is. Then check who holds the pool’s LP tokens: if they are burned or held by a time-lock contract, the liquidity cannot be withdrawn before the unlock date. If they sit in the creator’s wallet, the liquidity can be pulled at any moment.

  3. Check who can still mint, freeze or change the token

    On Solana, look at the token’s mint authority and freeze authority on Solscan; revoked (shown as empty or none) means nobody holds that power. On EVM networks, open the contract’s verified source on the explorer, look for owner-only functions such as mint, set tax, blacklist or pause, and check whether ownership is renounced and whether the contract sits behind an upgradeable proxy.

  4. Look at the top holders

    Open the holders list and add up the share held by the ten largest wallets, leaving out the pool itself, burn addresses and lock contracts. If a handful of wallets hold most of the supply, any one of them can crash the price. Look for bundled wallets too: several fresh wallets funded from the same source that all bought in the first few blocks are often one buyer.

  5. Test the sell side

    A token you can buy but not sell is a honeypot. Check the buy and sell tax that data sources report — GoPlus on EVM networks, RugCheck on Solana — then, if you go ahead, buy a small amount first and sell part of it before you add more. Repeat the test later: an owner who can change the tax can change it after you buy.

  6. Look at the creator and the token’s age

    On the explorer, open the address that created the contract and look at what else it has deployed. A wallet that has launched many tokens whose pools were emptied within days is a pattern worth noticing. Age matters too: a pool that is a few hours old with little money in it has no trading history to judge.

Red flags that should make you stop

What happens after the liquidity is pulled?

Your tokens do not disappear. They stay in your wallet or account, and the explorer still shows the balance. What is gone is the money in the pool that let anyone swap the token back into a coin with a market price. With the pool empty, a sell either fails or returns almost nothing, and the price chart drops to near zero and stays there.

Blockchain transactions cannot be reversed, so there is usually no way to recover the value. Be wary of anyone who offers to get it back for a fee. That is why the checks matter before a buy, not after.

Why one check is never enough

Each check covers a different way to lose money. A locked pool does not stop the owner minting new tokens; a renounced contract does not help if most of the supply sits in three wallets; a clean scan from yesterday says nothing about a tax the owner raised this morning. Read several signals together, use more than one data source, and size your first buy so that a bad result is a lesson rather than a disaster.

How DegenPass checks this

The DegenPass trust score reads these signals for a token and scores it from 0 to 100 across nine parts, including whether you can sell, whether anyone can mint or take tokens, who holds enough to crash the price, the creator’s track record and the token’s age. If the owner can seize, freeze or dilute holdings, the score is capped at 20 whatever else it finds.

Read the trust score methodology

Frequently asked questions

Can a token pass every check and still be a rug pull?
Yes. Checks read the contract, the pool and the holders as they are now. A team can still sell its own unlocked tokens, a lock can expire, and an owner who keeps any control can use it later. Treat a clean result as fewer known risks, not as a promise.
Is a locked liquidity pool enough on its own?
No. A lock only stops the liquidity from being withdrawn before the unlock date. It does not stop minting, tax changes, blacklists or a large holder selling into the pool. Read the lock together with mint and owner powers and the holder list.
Do I need to connect a wallet to run these checks?
No. Block explorers, DexScreener, GeckoTerminal, GoPlus and RugCheck can all be read in a browser without connecting anything. Never connect a wallet or sign a message just to “check” a token.

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