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Security & Scams

How rugs, scams and hacks work, and how to keep your wallet and money safe.

5 articles, newest first

Illustration on a near-black background of a launch timeline with four signals: a pale token hexagon with a red key for hidden token powers, a tight cluster of tall red buy bars at the first block, two red wallets trading in a loop for fake volume, and a nearly empty pool draining through a red arrow for pulled liquidity.

Oct 30, 20266 min read

How to Identify Suspicious Activity in New Token Launches

Hype, volume and a green chart are the easiest parts of a launch to fake. Here are the four on-chain signals I check instead (token settings, first-block buyers, real volume and liquidity) and where each one can fool you.

Illustration on a near-black background of one red creator wallet sending dashed funding lines to a few red wallets that all buy into a single token hexagon, with a pale magnifying glass over those hidden links and many grey independent wallets around them, showing how to trace who funded a Solana token's early buyers.

Oct 28, 20266 min read

How to Analyze a Solana Wallet Before Buying a Token

The chart is easy to fake. The wallets behind it aren't. Here's how I check the creator, the first buyers, their funders and the top holders before buying a Solana token, and where those checks stop working.

Illustration of a red vault of pooled funds inside a ring of validator nodes, most lit red and some dim, with a struck-through original blueprint behind a revised red blueprint carrying a check mark and a dashed path up to the ring: the XRP Ledger lending protocol being revised before validators approve it.

UpdateOct 23, 20266 min read

XRP Ledger Lending Protocol: Why It's Getting Fixed Before Launch

The XRP Ledger's lending protocol is getting a second amendment before it ever goes live. Here's what actually changes, why the caution makes sense after a decade-old bug, and what I'm taking from it for my own launch.

Illustration of a pale stablecoin payment route hopping through several wallet nodes, with side branches ending at red-crossed flagged nodes, stopped at a pale shield holding a risk gauge before a dashed line to the receiver: Mastercard's Stablecoin Security scoring a payment before it settles.

UpdateOct 21, 20265 min read

Mastercard Stablecoin Security: Risk Scores Before Money Moves

Mastercard's new Stablecoin Security tool lets banks score a stablecoin payment for fraud, scam and sanctions risk before it settles. Here's what it checks, who it's built for, and why your wallet history matters more now.

Illustration of a heavy red vault door with a long queue of small figures still waiting outside it, above a deadline track where the marker hops forward from 2023 to 2024, 2025, 2026 and finally 2027, each old year crossed out: Mt. Gox creditors still waiting as the repayment deadline keeps moving.

UpdateOct 20, 20265 min read

Mt. Gox Repayment Deadline Pushed to 2027: What It Still Teaches

Mt. Gox just pushed its repayment deadline out another year, to October 31, 2027. Here's what the trustee said, how much is still sitting in the estate, and what a 12-year wait teaches anyone holding coins on someone else's platform.

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DarkGeneral LabsTradeVault, a private trade journal, and Wallet Forensics, a wallet and token investigator, are both available now.The InterrogatorFree rug checker: paste a token, wallet or website and get a risk assessment with proof.Spot the RugA daily puzzle with real tokens. Read the stats, make the call, keep your streak.GuidesPlain-English checklists: rug pulls, honeypots, mint authority, LP locks and scam sites.RoadmapThe DarkGeneral roadmap: done, now and next, kept simple.Crypto newsLive headlines from CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Decrypt and The Block.TokenThe coin side of DarkGeneral: the first coin plan, official-address rules and the risks. No coin yet.Products & linksGear, tools and resources I actually use.AboutWho runs DarkGeneral, and why.