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How to check if a Solana token is a rug

A practical checklist for Solana tokens: mint and freeze authority, Token-2022 extensions, liquidity and LP lock, sell route, holder, creator and insider concentration, and pool age. With a free checker.

Most Solana rugs leave fingerprints on-chain before the price collapses. You can check the important ones in under a minute. Paste the mint into the free token checker to run all of them at once, or go through the list by hand.

The checklist

  1. Mint authority. If it is still set, someone can print more tokens at any time and sell them into the pool. For a meme or community token it should be renounced (null). See mint and freeze authority explained.
  2. Freeze authority. If it is set, your token account can be frozen so you cannot sell. Regulated stablecoins such as USDC keep it on purpose; almost nothing else needs it.
  3. Token-2022 extensions. Newer tokens can carry a permanent delegate (can move or burn anyone's tokens), transfer fees, a transfer hook (custom code on every transfer, which can block or tax sells), a pausable flag, or accounts that start frozen. Any of these deserves a close look.
  4. Liquidity. Under about $10,000 of liquidity, even a small sell moves the price a lot and the pool is easy to drain. Under $100,000 is still thin.
  5. LP lock or burn. If most of the pool's LP tokens are not locked or burned, the creator can pull the liquidity. See LP lock and burn explained.
  6. A real sell route. Ask an aggregator for a quote to sell a few hundred dollars into USDC. No route, or a huge price impact, means you may not be able to get out.
  7. Who holds the supply. Top holders above 40-60% of supply, a single non-pool wallet above 10-20%, a creator wallet above 10-30%, or linked insider wallets (coordinated snipers or a bundle) holding 5-20% are classic dump setups. See holder concentration, snipers and bundles.
  8. Age. A pool that is hours old has no track record. Most rugs happen in the first days.

How the checker turns this into a verdict

Each red flag subtracts points from 100 and some force a minimum rating. Active mint or freeze authority, no sell route, very thin liquidity, heavy top-holder or insider concentration, or a pool under a day old force at least CAUTION. A permanent delegate, a non-transferable token or a rug flag from RugCheck forces DANGER. The result is SAFE, CAUTION or DANGER with the reasons listed, so you can see exactly why.

SAFE is not a guarantee. These are heuristics on public data; they do not audit code or see what a team does off-chain. Not investment advice.

Check a token now

Open the free token checker (5 checks a day). Running checks from a bot or agent? The same verdict is available as JSON at GET /solana/token-verdict?mint=… with a free or paid API key, or for $0.01 per call over x402. Details in the Solana token safety check API guide.

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