Insights & Education
How to Spot a Rug Pull on Solana & Pump.fun
Rug pulls, honeypots and bundled launches drain thousands of Solana wallets every day. This is the exact checklist we use inside Lyncho's Call Outs before touching any pump.fun coin or fresh Raydium pair.
1. Check mint & freeze authority
The first 30 seconds of any coin check: the mint authority and freeze authority must be revoked. If mint authority is live, the dev can print unlimited supply and dump on you. If freeze authority is live, they can freeze your wallet so you can't sell. Use rugcheck.xyz, GMGN or Axiom's built-in safety panel — both should show "Revoked".
2. Confirm LP is burned or locked
Liquidity Provider tokens control the pool. If the dev holds the LP, they can pull it in one transaction and drain every buyer. On Solana, burned LP is the standard — look for 100% burn on rugcheck. On post-graduation Raydium pairs, an unlocked LP is an instant no.
3. Bundle sniff the launch
A "bundle" is when the dev buys their own coin across dozens of wallets in the same block as launch, then dumps on organic buyers. Use Trench Radar, Bubblemaps, or Photon's bundle tab. If more than 20% of supply was bought in the first block by connected wallets, it's a bundled launch — walk away.
4. Check dev wallet history
Paste the dev wallet into GMGN, Cielo or Solscan and look at their previous tokens. A dev with 40 launches that all went to zero is a serial rugger. A dev with one or two winners is far more trustable. This single check filters out most low-effort scams.
5. Look at holder distribution
Healthy meme coins have a wide holder base with the top 10 wallets under 25–30% combined. If the top 10 hold 50%+ and they're all fresh wallets funded from the same source, that's coordinated supply ready to dump. Bubblemaps visualises this in seconds.
6. Test the honeypot
Some contracts let you buy but not sell. Before sizing in, buy a tiny amount ($5–$10) and immediately try to sell half. If the sell fails or slippage jumps to 90%+, it's a honeypot. Axiom flags most known honeypots but new ones slip through daily.
7. Social & narrative checks
Check the Twitter/X account age, follower quality, and whether the Telegram is bot-farmed. Real communities have organic engagement; scam coins have thousands of followers made in the last 48 hours and one-word replies. A ticker that copies a real trending narrative but isn't the "official" one is almost always a rug.
8. Watch for classic rug patterns
Sudden 500%+ pump on zero volume, dev wallet moving to a fresh address, LP % dropping, or "team taking profits to relaunch marketing" — these are exit signals. If any two happen at once, sell first and ask questions later.
Tools we use inside the community
rugcheck.xyz for mint/freeze/LP checks, Bubblemaps for holder clustering, GMGN for dev wallet history, Cielo for wallet alerts, Trench Radar for bundle detection, and Axiom's built-in safety tab as the one-glance summary. We share live rugcheck screenshots on every call inside the Discord.
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