u/howell2332

I’m going to be slightly vulnerable here, but about a year ago my wife and I got hit by a scam token. Cost us a real chunk of money (80k+) and a lot of trust in the space. It was hella painful.
After that I went pretty deep on learning what actually separates legit tokens from rugs, and I figured I’d share the checklist I use now in case it helps someone else avoid what we went through.

Sorry if these aren’t sophisticated to some. Just the stuff I wish I’d known.

1. Liquidity lock
   If the team can pull liquidity at any moment, they will. Look for locked LP. No lock means they can rug you at any time, no questions asked.

2. Holder concentration
   Pull up the contract on Etherscan or BscScan and look at top holders. If the top 10 wallets hold more than 30 to 40 percent and they’re not labeled (exchange, locked, burn address), that’s a red flag. They can dump on you and you can’t do anything about it.

3. Mint function
   This one got me. If the contract has an open mint function, the team can create unlimited new tokens whenever they want and sell them into your liquidity. Free money for them. Total loss for you. A lot of “honeypot” hide here.

4. Contract age and history
   Brand new contract with no history is high risk by default. Doesn’t mean it’s bad, but the burden of proof is on it. Check when it was deployed, who deployed it, and whether that deployer has launched other tokens (especially ones that ended badly).

5. Trading restrictions
   The classic honeypot move. You can buy but you can’t sell. Some contracts have hardcoded rules that block sells, or extreme sell taxes (90%+). Tools like Honeypot.is will flag these. Always test with a small amount first if you can. I learned this one the hard way. :/

Hope this helps someone. The playbook hasn’t really changed in years, just gets repackaged with new names. Knowing what to check makes most of them obvious. Anyone have other red flags they look for that I missed?

We’re always ready to update our list.

So I’m a few weeks into trying to market my saas and I’m getting nowhere and starting to wonder if my whole channel mix is broken or if I just need to be more patient
quick context. I built a tool that explains crypto tokens in plain english. you paste an address, it tells you if it’s safe or a scam, and you can ask it questions if you don’t understand something. free tier, 9 bucks a month for unlimited. built it because my wife and I were screwed over by a scammer token last year and the existing tools we tried were all jargon (we were kind of new)
The problem is every ad channel has crypto gated. x bans my posts. instagram suppresses anything crypto. google ads requires licensing. so I’m down to tiktok, fb group admins, and reddit and that’s basically it
zero paid subs after 3 weeks. some tiktoks getting decent views (14k) but it’s not converting
what I’m wondering:
anyone built in a restricted niche (crypto, cbd, gambling, supplements, firearms) did you find an unlock or did you just grind organic until something clicked
for saas founders who grew on tiktok, how long until views actually turned into signups
am I just impatient. 3 weeks isn’t much I know but the no-sub thing is starting to mess with my head. I’m open to brutal feedback.
If you want to see the site for yourself let me know and I’ll paste it in the comments. Thank you!