A honeypot is a token you can buy but not sell, or can only sell at a punishing loss. The chart looks great because every trade is a buy.
Common mechanisms
- Sell block: the transfer function reverts for anyone except whitelisted addresses.
- Sell tax: a tax that starts at 0% and is raised to 50–99% after buyers arrive.
- Blacklist: the owner can block individual wallets from transferring.
- Adjustable slippage or max-transaction limits: parameters the owner can change so that sells fail.
- Mint authority: the owner can mint new supply and dump it into the pool.
- Freeze authority (Solana): the mint authority can freeze your token account so it cannot transfer.
What to check
| Check | Safe value |
|---|---|
| Honeypot simulation | Sell succeeds |
| Buy / sell tax | 0–5%, not modifiable |
| Mint authority | Revoked |
| Freeze authority | Revoked |
| Blacklist function | Absent |
| Source code | Verified |
| LP | Burned or locked |
The contract scanner runs these checks for any token on Solana, BNB Chain, Base, Ethereum and Robinhood Chain, and shows which provider reported each value.
Limits of automated checks
A contract can pass every simulation and still be upgraded later if it sits behind a proxy, and a social-engineering rug needs no contract tricks at all. Treat a clean scan as necessary, not sufficient.
Educational only. #DYOR #NFA