Interrogator guide

How to spot a rug pull

A rug pull is when the people behind a token take the money and run. You can't predict every one, but most leave fingerprints. Here are the checks that catch the common ones.

The three kinds of rug pull

• Liquidity pull: the creator withdraws the trading pool, and the price goes to zero instantly.
• Dump: insiders who got a big chunk of supply cheap sell it into everyone else's buys.
• Trap: the contract stops you selling (honeypot), freezes you, or lets the creator print more tokens.

The checklist

1. Who holds the supply? If the top 10 wallets (not counting the pool) hold more than 60%, a few people can crash it.
2. Is there an insider network? Many fresh wallets funded from the same source, buying at launch, is a coordinated dump waiting to happen.
3. Can the creator print tokens? On Solana, check mint authority. On EVM, check whether it's mintable and owned.
4. Can they freeze or block you? Freeze authority on Solana. Honeypot, blacklist, pause or high sell tax on EVM.
5. Is the liquidity locked or burned? If not, it can be pulled.
6. How deep is the liquidity? A few thousand dollars can be drained by one seller.
7. Does the trading look real? Volume 20 times bigger than liquidity, or buys massively outnumbering sells, can be bots.
8. How old is it? Most rugs happen in the first hours.
9. Is there anything behind it? No website and no socials means nobody to hold accountable.

One flag on its own doesn't make a scam. Several flags from different angles is the pattern.

Behavior red flags

• Pressure to buy right now, before a "big announcement".
• Admins delete questions about the contract or liquidity.
• Influencers who got free tokens pushing it.
• A website asking you to "connect wallet to claim" or enter a seed phrase. That's theft, every time.
• A copycat name of a famous coin with a different contract address.

How The Interrogator scores it

The Interrogator runs these checks automatically in five rounds: The Wallets, The Developer, The Trading, The Alibi and The Track Record. Each finding adds points, each round is capped at 5, and the total sets a risk rating: CLEARED (0-2), PERSON OF INTEREST (3-4), UNDER SUSPICION (5-7) or RED-HANDED (8+). The cap means one bad round can't convict a token alone. It takes evidence from more than one angle.

Every flag links to its source: the explorer, RugCheck, GoPlus, honeypot.is or DexScreener. CLEARED doesn't mean safe. It means nothing stood out in these checks at that moment.

Real examples of each flag

A token where ten wallets hold 70% of supply, all funded from the same address a few minutes before launch, is the textbook insider dump. A token with mint authority still active can be diluted at any time. An EVM token whose simulated sell fails is a honeypot no matter how good the chart looks. A pool with $3,000 of liquidity and $200,000 of daily volume is mostly bots trading with each other.

None of these needs inside knowledge to spot. They're all public on-chain or on DexScreener, and the hard part is just knowing where to look. That's the job The Interrogator does for you, with a link to every source so you don't have to take its word for it.

Rug pull checker FAQ

Can a checker catch every rug? No. A team with clean settings and locked liquidity can still sell their tokens slowly or abandon the project. Checks catch the mechanical traps, not bad intentions.

How fast is it? A case usually takes a few seconds, because it asks several sources at once with short timeouts.

After you buy

• Re-check if the price does something strange. Settings like tax can change on some contracts.
• Never approve unlimited spending to random sites.
• Take profits in stages. Nobody has ever been rugged on money they already took out.

These are findings, not accusations. Not financial advice. Do your own homework.

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