Anti-Rug Checklist: How to Check a Token Before You Buy

None of these checks needs a wallet or a signature. If a site asks you to connect a wallet to “verify” a token, close it.

Scammers copy names, tickers, logos, groups and bots. The contract address is the one thing they cannot copy. Take it from the project’s own site or its official links page, never from a reply, a DM or a group you were added to, and compare it in full, not just the first and last characters.

This is not a theoretical risk. The day after we launched our own token, a fake “loudscene” group with its own trading bot appeared. Our answer is a single official links page with the contract and every real account; look for the same on any project you check.

Burns are tokens sent to an address nobody controls, usually 0x000…0000 or 0x000…dEaD. They are gone for good. Check the share of the total supply that sits there, and whether that matches what the project says it burned. Our guide to announcing a burn with proof shows what an honest burn post looks like from the other side.

Locks are different: tokens held by a locker contract until a date, then released to their owner. A lock is a promise with an end date, so the date matters as much as the amount. For each lock, check:

• How many tokens, and what share of the supply.
• The unlock date, and how close it is. A large unlock next week is a fact worth knowing today.
• Whether it has already been withdrawn.
• Who can withdraw it: the owner of the lock.

Team tokens that a project says are “locked” should appear as a lock you can open. If you cannot find it, treat them as unlocked.

The wallet that launched a token is often the one people watch most closely. A launch wallet that still holds a large share can sell it at any time; one that holds little, or whose share sits in a lock, cannot do the same damage.

On some launchpads the launch wallet is on chain for anyone to read. Torch, on Robinhood Chain, emits a launch event that names the token and the wallet that created it, and our trust check reads it for every Torch token, then shows what that wallet holds now. For other tokens, open the top holders on the explorer and look for the deployer.

Liquidity is what lets you sell. Check how much is in the pool in dollars, and whether the liquidity itself is locked or burned. Unlocked liquidity can be pulled, which is the classic rug. On Torch, for example, launches put the whole supply in a Uniswap v4 pool with the liquidity locked for good; our guide to launching on Torch explains how.

Holders: the count tells you how many wallets hold the token, and the holder list tells you how evenly. When you read the largest holders, set aside the ones that are not people: the pool, the burn addresses and the lockers. What is left is the concentration that matters.

Some of the most important facts live in each token’s own code, and they differ from one contract to the next. Neither our trust check nor most dashboards can read them reliably for every token, so open the contract on the explorer:

• Is the source verified? If the code is not published on the explorer, you cannot check anything below.
• Taxes. What it charges on buys and on sells, and whether anyone can raise them later. A sell tax that can be set very high is how some tokens trap buyers.
• Minting. Whether new tokens can be created after launch, and by whom. A fixed supply means nobody can.
• Ownership. Who owns the contract, and what the owner can do: pause trading, block wallets, change fees. A renounced contract has no owner left to do any of it.
• Upgrades. Whether the contract is a proxy whose code can be replaced.

1. 1

   Paste the token

   Open /trust and paste a Robinhood Chain token: its contract address, or a Torch, Dexscreener or explorer link. No account, no wallet.

2. 2

   Read the report

   It reads the chain when you ask: the supply and what is burned, every HoodLock lock with its amount, unlock date and whether it was withdrawn, and for Torch launches the creator wallet and what it holds. Market figures come from Dexscreener and the holder count from GeckoTerminal.

3. 3

   Check it yourself

   Every figure links to where you can confirm it: the explorer, the lock’s proof, the holder list.

4. 4

   Read the contract

   The report links the contract’s page for the checks it does not read: taxes, minting and ownership.

Projects can use the same report the other way round: share it instead of asking people to take their word. That is how we point people at our own token. The film at the top of this post makes the same case from a trader’s side: CHIT’s token card answers a set of safety questions before the buy button.

If you run a project and want to make this kind of proof part of your posts, our 30-day post-launch plan and token launch video guide show how, and the crypto films gallery shows what other projects have made. A free account is enough to start.