The leaks · 44 / 86 · 2 min
Rugs, honeypots, and blacklists
A rug pulls the money out of a market. A honeypot lets you buy and blocks the sale. A blacklist is a list the contract uses to freeze you. All three are someone keeping the exit.
A honeypot lets you buy and blocks the sale. A rug pulls the pool. A blacklist freezes you.
A worked case
A person buys because the chart is rising and the buy works. The sell fails, or the liquidity disappears in one transaction. The buy working was the bait. The exit was the product they did not own.
The shapes
Liquidity is removed, so there is nothing to sell into. Or the code taxes a sell at nearly one hundred percent. Or a function lets the owner block your address after you buy.
Before you buy
Read whether the owner can change fees, mint, or block transfers. If you cannot read the contract, you are trusting a stranger's summary.
This page names the trap. It does not show you how to write one.
The buy button was the bait
The Squid Game token in 2021 is the plain version of a honeypot. Buyers could get in. Sellers could not get out, or could not get out in time. The site vanished. A rug is the cousin where the liquidity pool is pulled in one transaction, so the sell exists and the other side of it does not. A blacklist is a list inside the contract that freezes particular wallets. All three are someone keeping the exit.
You do not need a scanner's slogan to see it after the fact. You need, before you buy, to ask whether the contract owner can mint, block a sell, or remove the pool. If the chart is the only document you read, the chart is what they wrote for you. Memecoins and new pools are where this is cheapest to do, because attention arrives faster than reading.
A balance that remains on your screen after the pool is gone is not money. It is a token with nowhere to trade. The chain recorded it faithfully.
Read it yourself
These links are the record. They are not a recommendation, and they are not instructions. A news story or a court paper can still be wrong about a detail. The check does not change because a famous name is in the story.
Apply the check
Open a question. The line is about this topic. It is not a verdict that anything is safe.
The wallet that pulled the pool or blocked the sell.
The contract owner.
That owner. Your balance can remain on screen after the exit is gone.
Check yourself
If you can buy a token, can you always sell it?
No. The contract can block the sell or tax it into nothing.
After this you can ask whether the seller can stop you selling, before you buy.