How to spot a rug pull on Solana: 7 checks from 10,650 tokens
A rug pull is when the people behind a token take the money and the price collapses, by selling their supply, pulling liquidity or minting new tokens. Most are visible before you buy: in our data, tokens from creators who had launched 20+ tokens before doubled only 1.4% of the time, against 16.8% for first-time creators.
What is a rug pull?
A rug pull is a token whose creators or insiders cash out and leave buyers holding something worthless. On Solana it usually happens in one of three ways: the creator and connected wallets sell a large share of supply into buyers, the liquidity pool is pulled, or the token's mint authority is used to print new tokens. A quiet version is the slow rug: the team sells a little every hour until nothing is left.
When we clean up our database every hour, these show up clearly. In the first clean-up on 1 November 2026, 61 tokens older than a day were removed: 52 had crashed 70% or more and 9 showed rug mechanics such as pulled liquidity.
Check 1: who created it, and how many times before?
The strongest single warning in our data is a serial creator: a wallet that has launched many tokens before.
Show as table
| Value | Note | |
|---|---|---|
| First token from this wallet | 16.8% | 2,598 tokens |
| 1-5 previous tokens | 9.2% | 769 tokens |
| 6-20 previous tokens | 3.8% | 764 tokens |
| More than 20 previous tokens | 1.4% | 1,528 tokens |
Check 2: has the developer already sold?
Show as table
| Value | Note | |
|---|---|---|
| Developer still holding | 16.1% | 2,696 tokens |
| Developer already sold some | 6.6% | 4,505 tokens |
Watch for a developer moving tokens to many fresh wallets too. That hides the real share; we flag it when more than 90% of the developer's tokens are moved out.
Check 3: can new tokens be minted or wallets frozen?
If mint authority is still on, the creator can print new supply and sell it. If freeze authority is on, they can stop you from selling. Pump.fun tokens have both off by default; tokens created elsewhere often don't. Either one is an automatic reject in our filter.
Check 4: is the liquidity real?
Look for at least $10,000 of liquidity, and check that it sits in the main pool, not in a fake pool created to make the token look tradable. Our filter rejects tokens below $10k liquidity and tokens whose only pool is not a known DEX.
Check 5: socials (yes, they matter)
Show as table
| Value | Note | |
|---|---|---|
| No website, X or Telegram | 4.9% | 1,134 tokens |
| One link | 9.3% | 686 tokens |
| Two links | 16.1% | 852 tokens |
| All three | 31.3% | 67 tokens |
Social links cost nothing to add, so they prove little alone. Their absence is still a strong warning.
Check 6: bundles and snipers
Bundled supply (bought in the same block as the launch) and snipers (bought in the first seconds) give a small group control over the price. Tokens with heavy bundles actually pump more often, and then fall harder. Read bundles and snipers explained.
Check 7: holder concentration
If the top 10 holders (excluding the liquidity pool) own more than about a third of supply, a few wallets can end the party. Watch whether the share grows after launch: insiders accumulating through fresh wallets is a classic setup.
A rug checker does this in seconds
All seven checks run on every token MemeSonar shows, before you see it. Tokens that fail are hidden, not just labelled, and every hour the system learns the profile of the rugs it caught.
Compare tools: Best rug checkers
MemeSonar does this for you in real time: every new Solana token, every influencer call and every tracked wallet, scored and filtered for rugs.
Request accessNot financial advice. Numbers are measurements of past tokens and calls; meme coins are extremely risky and most go to zero.