1. Mint authority
The mint authority is the address allowed to create more of the token. If it still exists, supply can be increased after you buy, and your share can be diluted to nothing by whoever holds it.
On an explorer this appears on the token's page as a mint authority field. Revoked or null is what you want. An address, especially one that also deployed the token, is a live ability to inflate.
2. Freeze authority
The freeze authority can stop token accounts from transferring. If it is live, the ability to sell your position is a permission somebody else holds, and it can be withdrawn while you are holding.
This is the single most direct version of a trap: the price can look fine and the exit can simply be closed. Like the mint authority, you want it revoked, and it is visible in the same place.
3. Liquidity disposition
Liquidity is what makes selling possible. If the LP tokens are held by the deployer, the pool can be withdrawn, and the price collapses to nothing regardless of what the chart was doing a minute earlier.
| LP state | What it means | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Burned | The LP tokens are destroyed | Cannot be withdrawn |
| Locked | Held by a timelock contract | Cannot be withdrawn until unlock |
| Held by deployer | One address can remove it | High |
| Still on a bonding curve | Not yet a pool | Different model, read the venue |
Locked is not the same as burned. A lock has an expiry, and an expiry is a date on which the risk returns. Worth knowing which one you are looking at.
4. Holder distribution
Open the holders list. You are not looking for a specific number, you are looking for a shape. A handful of addresses holding most of the supply means the price is whatever those addresses decide it is.
- One address holding a very large share, particularly the deployer.
- Several addresses holding near-identical amounts, which usually means one person with several wallets.
- Addresses funded from the same source shortly before launch, visible by following the funding transaction.
- A holder count so low that any single exit moves the price substantially.
5. The deployer's history
Click the address that created the token and read its history. This is the highest-value check on the list and the one people skip, because it takes slightly longer than the others.
- 1How old is the walletAn address created minutes before the launch has no reputation to lose.
- 2What else has it deployedA series of tokens that all went to zero is a pattern, not a coincidence.
- 3Where was it funded fromFunding from a mixer or from a wallet that funded several other launches tells you what kind of operation this is.
- 4Is it still holdingA deployer who already sold into the opening is telling you what they think the token is worth.
6. Whether a sell works at all
The previous five checks read state. This one tests behaviour, and it is the only check that catches a contract engineered specifically to let you in and not out.
A simulated sell submits the sell you would make and observes whether it would succeed, without actually executing it. If the simulation fails while a buy simulates fine, you are looking at a honeypot and no amount of chart reading changes that.
What these checks cannot see
Being honest about the gaps matters more than adding a seventh check, because a false sense of completeness is its own risk.
- They cannot tell you whether the price will go up. Nothing on chain can.
- They cannot see intent. A clean contract run by someone who plans to sell everything in an hour looks exactly like a clean contract.
- They cannot see off-chain coordination, such as a group organising to exit together.
- They cannot see future changes on venues where parameters are configurable per launch.
- They are a snapshot. State that is safe now can change if an authority was never revoked.
What the six checks do is remove the mechanical traps. The remaining risk is ordinary market risk, which is the risk you were intending to take.
Where this fits into a screening stack
- Avoiding rug pullsThe four mechanisms behind these checks
- The full sniper bot guideWhere screening sits in the execution path
- Sniper bot settingsWhat each screening filter also removes
- How to start snipingWriting a screening profile before the first entry
Questions people ask
These come up in the ticket queue often enough to answer once, properly. If yours is not here, send it over and it probably ends up on this page.
Run six checks from a block explorer: mint authority revoked, freeze authority revoked, liquidity burned or locked, holder distribution not concentrated, the deployer's wallet history, and a simulated sell that succeeds. Any single failure is enough to skip.
Key takeaways
- Six checks, all readable from an explorer, all faster than deciding to buy.
- Mint and freeze authority should both be revoked; either one live is an exit somebody else controls.
- Burned liquidity removes the withdrawal risk; locked liquidity postpones it to a known date.
- Holder distribution is about shape, not a number: concentration and identical amounts are both warnings.
- The deployer's history is the highest-value manual check and the one most often skipped.
- A simulated sell is the only definitive honeypot test, and the one worth automating.