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Just dropping a bit of info to help you guys from making a dumb mistake like I did.  :/  I bought around 200 bucks worth of some memecoin which turned out to be what they call a honey pot...  Meaning you could buy it but you're not able to sell it.  Lolol.

This info is mostly for Ethereum users but pretty sure other L1 users would find it useful.

Anyway here are the ways to avoid making the same mistake...

1.  Find out more about the project's token in https://honeypot.is/

It basically checks if the token is a honey pot.

2.  Check if the liquidity is locked.  PEPE got as big as it got because traders tend to trust a token if its liquidity is locked.

The easiest way to do this is by going to the token's page at https://www.dextools.io/ and look at the token's label called  'Total liquidity'.  If it doesn't have a green lock then it isn't locked.  Stay away.

3.  Go to the token's page in https://dexscreener.com/ and look at the buys and the sells.  If it's mostly just buys with just a couple of sells, that's most likely a honey pot.

4.  Go look at the token's holders tab at https://etherscan.io/

The more concentrated most of the supply is to just a few holders, the more likely it's gonna be dumped.

5.  Another important thing is to check in https://etherscan.io/ is if the contract is verified.  In the token's contract page there's a tab called contract.  If it has a green check then it's verified.

Stay safe out there.

If you guys have more to add, feel free to post them itt.  Thanks.

Edit:  Typos.

Thank you very much for sharing, but I really want people not to get into short-term games that are full of pump/dump risks, and especially dangerous for newcomers. when these market skills are still very low. Blindly FOMO thinking that scams are in the name of crypto projects and using investment terms to manipulate, I'd better encourage people to follow the path of finding technology products bring feature solutions that help this market.

Remember that this set of people have also developed a strong resistance to any meas that could reveal their evil deed, they get updates everytime and are smarter than we may think of them, after you would have fulfilled all the conditions from the above measures taken, then still believe that the risk is not limited because every past scammed projects all started well and people research them before they turned to scam.

Checking the number of holders is what I usually do so it's nice to learn more tools that will help prevent or lessen the likelihood of losing money. It's an additional work just to buy a "lottery ticket" but it's never wrong to educate yourself and take those extra measures. There's a higher chance to "win" if you know you won't get rug pulled or dumped on by fraudulent devs after all hehe.

Well I must say that was rather unlucky then. I wouldn't really only use this on meme coins, this kind of checking should be pretty useful among any other coin out there. I mostly check token holders and how much spread out it actually is just to avoid some sudden manipulation dump.

Outside of numbers it's pretty natural to read the tokens whitepaper just to see what they're doing and what they're planning to do in the future. Can be quite convoluted at times but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Still lucky for you mate because we are only talking about 200 bucks here and not so big that you cannot afford to lose.
while I have experience the same back in the years when i staked my tokens in a gambling site that turns out that after staking your funds will be left inside and no way to withdraw .
now it is getting clearer from your post that this is truly happening even in new generation projects such as Meme coins.
thanks that I will never get involved into this one.

Thank you for sharing this information it has been very helpful to me.
I tried https://honeypot.is/ on a token on the BSC network it works too, I got a detailed scan of the contract, so thank you it works perfectly for me.

Considering it lucky sure but you just can't throw a thousand bucks to a memecoin knowing that the chances for it to take off is little to non. That's the same reason why OP had carelessly put his 200 to such memecoin without having to go through all the process he have enumerated to secure yourself from falling into a meme scam.
What we have to avoid here mostly is to become a honey pot victim so I guess checking out all OP's instructions could really help. But I'd rather be more cautious if I don't see anything sold and majority is buy orders.

Thanks for sharing this piece of information. I personally wish I knew these much earlier, I probably wouldn't have fall a victim of some scam projects. for what it's worth, I hope no one falls a victim of scammers out there, they are ever ready to run away with your money.

At least you know this information now and it should help you to avoid being scammed on the future, just never forget that even altcoins that seem to be doing everything the right way can still turn into a scam, as I have seen cases in which the majority of the developers were honest about their desire to create a good coin, but the rest were panning on scamming everyone including their peers from the very beginning, and those are the kind of rug pulls you cannot possibly see coming.

This is good information and dex tools are just awesome. They are coming real handy I guess when checking projects status. This strategy is far better than the paid services where they claim they asses the project validity and check for you whether you should invest in that particular coin/token or not? The dex tools can give a clear idea of its liquidity, daily traded volume, ongoing orders and it's volume. Everything contributes to shaping the clear picture of that particular project.

I am not sure if this strategy or dex tool is only applicable to the memecoin alone but it should be updated with the other projects' information as well. Since it is a decentralized tool, it might be synched with all the chain projects other than meme coins.

Then one has to narrow his research thoroughly to get the best information needed before investing for a particular altcoin or token, many newbies fall a victim because they were not aware quite alright about the basic requirements before they invested, some don't even have an idea of the risk involved, all they got to do is to invest and sit to receive their income while on a fake crypto projects, there's more risk if you don't trust those that you're investing in their project because some already had a bad record while some were in to scam investors.

Thats a nice precautions dude. I would like to add this very useful product of defi project.

https://de.fi/scanner

You just need to input the contract address of the project and they show the potential threat of a new project. Upon clicking different contract interactions or malicious from the contract can be seen and they have a score for that to know either the project is safe and has no threat like being a honeypot.

Ive been using this as a reference whenever I am apeing some memecoins on bsc, eth and any L1. Mostly they support other projects already.

Thanks for sharing this handy tool. It would be awesome if you had this service for more than just ERC-20 and BEP-20. I have been buying some SPL tokens on SOL and while other coins aren't that popular, i would like to have detectors for all of them. Even for TRC-20 that i passionately hate.

Check their smart contract. Scam smart contracts will be marked by block explorers like Etherscan.io, bscscan.com ...
What is a honeypot crypto scam and how to spot it? (https://cointelegraph.com/news/what-is-a-honeypot-crypto-scam-and-how-to-spot-it)
8 Ways to Check If It’s a Token Scam (https://dappradar.com/blog/8-ways-to-check-if-its-a-token-scam)
Understanding and Avoiding Crypto Honeypot Scams (https://consensys.net/blog/metamask/understanding-and-avoiding-crypto-honeypot-scams/)

If it is a scam token, it won't spend time and resource to submit for token verification, its token will not have a logo.

Check token vesting schedules and token distributions in at least top 100 addresses.
https://vestlab.io/
https://token.unlocks.app/

Check token blacklist https://github.com/dappradar/tokens-blacklist

Yeah after the Pepe pump I went to dextools and was going to buy a few promising meme tokens however at the amount of rugs and scams I figured I should stay away.

Another thing I found is that some tokens have a sell tax. Sometimes it’s 100%. So I am assuming since it’s called a tax, most likely every sell goes to the dev creator. So pretty much another honey pot type of deal.

I think the meme hype is over. Fees are lower and don’t see these meme tokens hitting ATH anytime soon.

Nice tools. I have been using dexscreener.com to check the chart of altcoins not listed on major exchanges. dextools.io certainly can be another neat tool to monitor them.

I'm also careful in investing memecoins, I'd rather be going for Doge since it is a lot safer than spending $100 for tokens I can see have pumped over 500x already.

Yeah, basically what the Ops was talking about are how to avoid falling for a project that is an outright scam, where the dev have no intentions whatsoever to push the project anywhere. However, like you said, there are projects that are honest from the very beginning, but somewhere along the line, it collapses and then fails to meet expectations.

Truly newbies are the main target of these scam projects, but then, I have seen cases where OGs have even fallen for these scam projects because it appears so clean and flawless but in the end it turns out to be a scam.
In this space, one just got to expect the unexpected.

If the sell tax reaches 100%, isn't this the same as the buyer getting nothing? It might be easier to know if there is such a token. If this is a typo and you might wants to write 10%, i think this 10% is a reasonable tax and many project using this. The tax allocation varies, some are returned to all holders, some are burned, etc. To be sure, most of the meme tokens that turn as a scam, mostly is non-saleable or smartcontract created to disable outgoing transactions and rug.

Regarding ATH, if ATH achievement is already very high, and the recent drop more than 90% and current market position with low trading volume at AMM and cex, chances this token will be abandoned very high.

Fairly it go down. But Im sure once another meme coins show up and disturb again the network there would be another cause of high usage. Memecoin are will always be present sometime it become a dull moment cause not all meme are gonna do what shib, pepe, wojak, and any other shitcoins out there are doing in terms of performance. Mostly died out after few days, weeks and months.

Hard to assess meme token for long term frame, I suggest to deal only if there's a hype and take profit as soon as possible.
Meme token seems like a seasonal project, developer are popping once the market is getting better so for sure the next trend will be on next bull trend.
Avoid meme token if you are planning to hold longer, because not all meme tokens can survive, only few can make it even if there's no hype.

Heh yup!  The thing is to treat memecoins for what they are...  Buying in for some amount you're comfortable with and see how it goes, aka gambling.  Lol.  There's really no way to know if they're gonna still be there after a couple of weeks or so.  But as they get more established, that's a different story.  I'm talking more about those new ones that just got listed in places like Uniswap and hasn't seen a day of existence.  :D :D :D

They degen way.

But I think PEPE is slowly establishing itself to be considered somewhat safe to hold for a couple of months assuming you have a good entry.

There's no guarantee no matter how that one cannot get scamm with these memecoins becau they are many, we are only seeing pepe coin now trending, we don't know which one next, maybe by the the present ones would have also been out in place must as those before them, so whenever you are investing on NFTs, have it at the nack of your mind that it's a risk taking idea ad it's fifty fifty, you can also do your own research in finding more about them.

I don't think your own research will yield good results, because all these meme coins look about the same and have no background or application. Only insider information can make you very rich. This was the case with pepe or shiba. In the other cases only a few were able to make money. Mostly people lost money after purchase. There are a lot of such coins on the market now, but almost all of them are scams.

New altcoins that just follow the hype trend are only created to enrich the creators of these coins. when the project gets a lot of money the altcoins will be abandoned and the developer get a lot of money from a lot of investors. this is very sad and look at this time, memecoin is also hype and there are lots of memecoin scammers who steal a lot of investors' money which then withdraws the liquidity that is already in the market

A memecoin would be only a scam if a rugpull happens. But if this is coming from what we saw with $Pepe and other memecoins such as SHIB and DOGE, I don't see it as scam but rather a usual market pattern in this industry. The market prices suddenly fell simoly because huge investors decided to take profit already and those who entered midway of its pump turned out to be the squeezed in the middle. This should be a lesson to not be too confident on every market price pumps. Always check the volume and price action. Take note that memecoins have no utility which could sustain high market price. It solely depends on demand and once it breaks, expect for a sudden crash on its value.

Here's the thing, there's no guarantee if you win pvp mode in trading, which what trading memecoins mostly is, but what the guide guarantees is you won't get trapped by honey pots.  Honey pots are those ones when you can buy the token but you can't sell the token...  A total scam.  And it sucks because you feel like a dumb mfker.  :D

Another thing is it's a game of liquidity.  If the developer locked over 90% of liquidity like what I think PEPE did, that at least shows that the token might not be a rug.

And the chances for most memecoins not to experience this sudden bankrupt with rugpull s very rare, that's why od you're investing in them, one must target a particular time frame to serve as the limited time he will sell them out after he might have earn some little income from them because anything can happen anytime if you hold for long, memecoins are sometimes seasonal, since they are project, most were being introduced just to testrun the market and see the possible outcome but if you invest on such, there's no how you will not experience a rugpull with them along the line.



Every coin comes in with it own pattern or way and that doesn't change anything about them from not having the same risk others have that makes them left the market.

This is the game of meme coins, they will rise and fall. After some time another cycle will happen again but for now or later on, we might see a crypto bull run first before any other trends in the market. Most meme coins have no use other than for pumping and dumping, so saying that they have a high usage seems weird.

Meme coins bring fun in a dull market. It kills the boredom for a while when we are seem to be stuck in a rut and are waiting for another major event. You shouldn't mix SHIB with pepe and the other meme coin because they are not on the level of SHIB. SHIB is still here and have some demand with or without the meme hype, but I doubt if others will still be there after some time.

And considering there is only so many "insider", and it's limited, we can assume that we are not going to be one of them so we should be staying away from them at all costs. I understand that some people want to see that change and they want to make sure that they can make a profit, but the reality is that we shouldn't really be doing any type of risky moves with meme projects.

If you really want to throw in something like 100 bucks to each of them just in case it goes up, that's fine because even if you lose that earning 100 bucks back is not that hard. But that doesn't mean that we should be expecting that to change anything on the long run at all and we should be expecting it to be as normal as it gets to just stay away from them, that's the real way to keep your money safe.

I agree with those things OP and in general, we really have to spend more time doing research just to make sure that we are investing the right coins, and must be applied to all. Many people got fallen into scam projects due to laziness and got overwhelmed because of the hyped it made and yes, due to the influence of the promoters who promise huge rewards.
To avoid getting into this situation, we must also be smart and very cautious when investing and don't let others decide what we have to do, and it should be done after the research. 

What precious knowledge to be shared! Thank you. Although I never invest in meme coins, this is actually also useful to do research in general. I was even aware of the honey pot. It's really dangerous. The way people try to trick or scam you is developing from time to time, and people like you are needed to help others anticipate the crime. We can use these technical tips and combine them with other ones so we can be more careful when investing.

I think it really hits everyone, but for the first point Find out more about the project's token in https://honeypot.is/, from what you research, it really helps users in making decisions, meaning that user can't do anything else, especially if selling on Pancakeswap after buying tokens, even if we force the sale to only use up gas. Very cool.

This is great! Following OP guide how to avoid scam tokens is very helpful. To be honest, I don't know some of the websites that are mentioned in the OP. This is a must guide in buying a meme coin as honeypot tokens are greatly increasing nowadays since scammers are utilizing it and the way how to know if it is a honeypot token is still not a common sense. OP had been fooled by this kind of scam even his a veteran on cryptocurrency, What more about newbies who just started on crypto. I'm imagining the casualties of this method of scamming. This method of scamming should be popularize as well as the guide that OP made.

This will tell us scam is impossible to stop because even experienced traders/investors have been fooled by them, how much more for those who have not.
In fact, we have a lot of tools detecting scam projects but still, many scam projects pop up in the market and have been enjoyed by the community.
The safest way I see to avoid getting caught by them is to invest only in those projects that have already been tested, those projects that already have results. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are popular among meme coins, they are worthy or not but a good choice compared to others.

Everyone of us might have been involved on being scammed by any of the crypto coins or token before and would have conducted a research on the before this also happens, which means we cannot predict them enough of their true and genuine identity, Altcoins cannot be predicted accurately base on the level of research we made about them except those behind them are people that can be trusted

Thanks for the extra info and tips! When investing in cryptocurrencies, it is always important to be careful and do your own research. These ways to avoid scams and unverified projects that you describe can be useful for users of Ethereum and other blockchains.
However, it is important to note that even with such checks and precautions, there is a risk of investing in new or obscure tokens. The cryptocurrency market is subject to high volatility and fraud, so it is important to invest only the funds that you are ready to lose.

Thanks for sharing this information and I find it very helpful. There's a popular saying that once beaten twice shy. At some point some of us have been a victim of such tokens and sadly we have learnt the hard way. It is very important that we always do due diligence before commiting our funds into any project. This is my first time of using https://honeypot.io, so I tried some token contracts and most passed except for one that gave a warning message that the "contract is closed source proceed with caution", It must be a honeypot.

If newbies learned their lesson after suffering a single negative experience investing in meme coins or some other altcoins I would consider that to be a good thing and the money lost as the price needed to learn that lesson, unfortunately many newbies need to lose many times and waste all their capital before they learn this lesson, and this is sad as even if at that moment they finally have the common sense necessary to stay away from meme coins, it does not matter anymore as their capital has taken a brutal hit already anyway.

verifying that the smart contract code doesn't give the devs authority to make some rugpull is one thing but finding out meme coin that actually have the potential to become next shiba is another thing and it's most difficult, i always have the idea that meme coin is always luck based.

Thank you for sharing the information, because I have made many mistake buying meme coin's that dump, with the information, at least the risk of investing meme Coin that we quickly dumped maybe reduced, not to patronize scammed project.

thank you for wanting to help share very important information about meme coins so you don't get scammed, because this is very important especially for newcomers to the crypto world to avoid FOMO

No one is safe. If this kind of scam method is well known to everyone, I'm pretty sure that scammers will find another way or create new method of deceiving people with the help of cryptocurrency. Scammers can't be stopped and I believe that they will exist as long as they can. It's just crypto is one of the hub they chose because of the nature of it of being anonymous and undiscovered ways to fool people. It's hard to lower your guard even if you know or aware of past scam projects to be honest since scammers are everywhere and the trend which can be a way to produce a great profit is also the one that is being targeted by them. It would be nice if we have a channel here for advices or guides like this. It's really helpful and can possibly attract new members to join this forum.

We cannot really avoid these things from happening because sometimes, it's not just the beginners or novice that keeps on making these mistakes of seeing meme coins as a profitable coin, even the regular ones or have been already in the crypto world for long now are still engaging in meme coins. The said fact is, it's not that they don't know the risks of these coins, it's just that they are willing to take those risks mentioned in the hopes of riding the wave when the whales started moving again.

Really appreciate those guys who dropped by itt and said thank you.  It feels good to know that I at least helped some of you in some way.  I'll be making more threads like these, aside from the airdrop threads, and hopefully they help many of you guys make the right decisions and make some money off the market at the same time.  ;)

GL on your trades guys.