To spot a rug pull on Solana, check five things before you buy: that mint and freeze authority are disabled, that liquidity is burnt or locked, that the top holders don't control too much supply, that the launch wasn't heavily bundled, and what the developer's wallet has done before. Most trading terminals show these checks on the token page. Passing them lowers some risks, but most memecoins still end up worthless.
Risk notice: Crypto trading is high risk and memecoins can go to zero in minutes. Trading bots use hot wallets. This page is not financial advice; only trade what you can afford to lose.
How common rugs are
A Solidus Labs report covered by CoinDesk in May 2025 found that of more than 7 million tokens launched on Pump.fun since January 2024, only about 97,000 kept at least $1,000 in liquidity. Solidus classed 98.6% as rug pulls or pump-and-dumps, and found 93% of Raydium pools showed "soft rug pull" traits. Pump.fun disputed the framing, saying most memecoins, like most tweets or art, "are worth little in the long run."
Either way, the base rate is brutal. The checks below help you avoid the obvious traps, not the odds.
The types of rug pull
| Type | What happens | Main check |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidity pull | Creator removes the pool's liquidity, so there's nothing to sell into | LP burnt or locked |
| Mint rug | Creator mints new tokens and sells them | Mint authority disabled |
| Freeze / honeypot | Creator freezes holders' token accounts so they can't sell | Freeze authority disabled |
| Insider dump | Insiders who bought early (often through linked wallets) sell into buyers | Holder concentration, bundle % |
| Slow rug | Team fades away and sells over days or weeks | Dev wallet history |
Check 1: Mint authority
Solana's token docs define mint authority as "the account authorized to create new units of the token, increasing the supply." If it's active, the holder can print more tokens and dump them. BONKbot's docs are direct: "Mint Authority should be disabled!" GMGN shows this as MintDisable, where "Yes indicates safety, meaning that the token creator cannot issue additional tokens" (GMGN).
Check 2: Freeze authority
Freeze authority is "the account authorized to freeze tokens in a Token Account, preventing them from being transferred" (Solana). BONKbot's freeze authority page explains the risk: a creator could lock your account right when you need to sell. GMGN's related flag is Blacklist, where "Yes" means your wallet cannot sell.
This is the closest Solana equivalent to an Ethereum honeypot. GMGN defines a honeypot as a token where "the token creator uses technical measures to restrict the sale," with warning signs like a 99% sell tax.
Check 3: Liquidity and LP burn
A token needs a liquidity pool to be tradable. When a creator adds liquidity to a DEX pool, they get LP tokens that can withdraw it. BONKbot's LP burnt page explains that if those LP tokens aren't burnt, the creator can pull the liquidity and leave buyers unable to sell. GMGN shows a Burnt percentage; higher is safer.
GMGN's failure guide lists this exact case as an error: the creator removed liquidity, "resulting in no available routing."
Pump.fun tokens work differently. On the bonding curve, the Pump.fun program holds the reserves rather than a creator-owned pool. At graduation, Pump.fun's developer docs say liquidity moves to PumpSwap and "the LP tokens received from the PumpSwap pool are then burnt" (Pump.fun on GitHub). BONKbot's docs note that Pump.fun prevents hard rugs, but holders with a big share of supply can still dump. More in what is Pump.fun.
Also check the size of the pool. Thin liquidity means big slippage in both directions.
Check 4: Holder concentration
Look at the top 10 holders, excluding the liquidity pool itself. GMGN treats top-10 holdings under 30% as "relatively safe." Bubblemaps' guide uses similar bands: under 15% insider control is "reasonably healthy", 15%-30% needs close monitoring, over 30% is high risk, and over 50% means "the token is effectively controlled by one entity."
Watch for supply split across many wallets. Bubblemaps describes a common pattern: "The deployer spreads supply across twenty addresses so no single wallet looks suspicious, then they all sell simultaneously." Bubble maps show lines between wallets that have transferred tokens to each other.
Check 5: Bundled launch
GMGN's bundle guide (August 2026) defines a bundle as packing "create the token + the first buys from several wallets" into one group of transactions in the same block. It cites research across 41,470 Pump.fun launches in which "36.5% of supply on average was held by coordinated accounts" that looked unrelated on-chain.
GMGN shows Bundle % in its Trenches feed and lets you filter trades by bundler. Bubblemaps flags bundles over 15% as meaningful and over 30% as "effectively pre-bought by insiders." GMGN adds that no single bundle % is a safety certificate: check whether those wallets still hold.
Check 6: Dev wallet and history
Look at what the creator's wallet holds and has done. GMGN shows Rug History, which flags earlier rug pulls from the same creator, and labels wallets as DEV, Sniper or Insider. A dev who has launched and abandoned many tokens is a strong warning. So is a dev who sold most of their allocation in the first minutes.
Check 7: Snipers and insiders
Many terminals label early buyers. GMGN has a page on insider traders, snipers and the first 70 buyers. A high share held by snipers means a lot of supply waiting to sell at the first sign of profit.
Check 8: The contract address and socials
Trade only by contract address (CA), never by ticker. Copycat tokens reuse names. Check that the CA matches the one on the project's official X account or site, and be suspicious of brand-new accounts or deleted posts.
Tools that run these checks
- Terminals and bots: GMGN's token security panel, and Trojan's sniper filters for mint/freeze authority, liquidity and dev holdings (Trojan docs). Check what your own terminal shows, such as Axiom or Padre (Terminal).
- RugCheck: recommended in BONKbot's safety docs.
- Bubblemaps: visual holder clusters.
GMGN's disclaimer applies to all of them: checks "are for reference only and cannot guarantee 100% accuracy."
What checks can't catch
- Insiders selling "legally". A token can pass every technical check and still be dumped by wallets that bought first.
- Coordinated promotion. Paid calls and influencer pumps don't show up in token data.
- Your own timing. Buying late into a spike is how most losses happen, rug or not.
If you use copy trading or sniping, these risks multiply. Read copy trading Solana wallets explained and see our best Solana sniper bot page for tools with rug filters.
Related guides
- Solana trading bot glossary
- Are Solana trading bots safe?
- GMGN review (strong token security panel)
- Best memecoin screeners and DEX Screener alternatives (screeners that show holder and liquidity data)
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