Guide
How to check a Solana token before buying: a 5-step checklist
Five factual checks that take a few minutes. They won't tell you if a token will go up, but they catch the most common traps we see on trending Solana tokens.
1. Get the contract address from the official source
Popular tickers get copied within hours: we regularly count 10 to 20 Solana tokens sharing the name of a trending one. Take the contract address from the project's official account, never from a search result, and compare the full address before you swap.
2. Compare liquidity to market cap
Liquidity is the money in the pool that lets you sell. When it is a small fraction of the market cap, even modest sells move the price hard. Example: a token with $256K of liquidity for a $9.6M market cap (under 3%) fell 85% in a few hours, without any liquidity being pulled.
3. Look at holder concentration
If the top 10 wallets hold a large share of the supply, a few sellers can drain the pool. We flag tokens where the top 10 hold 40% or more.
4. Check the liquidity lock and token permissions
Unlocked liquidity can be removed by whoever controls it. Check the token on RugCheck for unlocked LP, mint authority and freeze authority.
5. Keep watching after you buy
Checks before buying are not enough. Since 31 Oct 2026, more than half of the trending Solana tokens we flagged lost their liquidity, typically within an hour. See the live statistics.
What this checklist can't do
No check predicts a rug. Even tokens with no red flag lose their liquidity: about a third of them in our data. Only put in what you can afford to lose.
Data only, not financial advice.