How to Assess a Memecoin and Not Get Scammed ;)

[tokeweed]

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.

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[ElmedoRator]

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.

[Doan9269]

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.

[Yogee]

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.

[Wexnident]

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.

[peter0425]

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.

[yhiaali3]

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.

[Oasisman]

Still lucky for you mate because we are only talking about 200 bucks here and not so big that you cannot afford to lose.

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.

[Victorik]

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.

[Silberman]

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.

[so98nn]

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.

[Doan9269]

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.

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.

[cryptoaddictchie]

If you guys have more to add, feel free to post them it

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.

[o48o]

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.

[LSDadventure]

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?
8 Ways to Check If It’s a Token Scam
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

[adaseb]

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.

[bittraffic]

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.

[Victorik]

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.

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.

[Victorik]

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.

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.

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.

[masulum]

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.

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.