What is Honeypot?
A malicious token contract that lets people buy but secretly blocks them from selling, trapping their funds.
A honeypot is a scam contract engineered so that buys succeed but sells fail. Victims see the price rising and buy in, only to discover they can never sell. The scammer is the only address able to offload tokens.
Honeypots hide behind code that conditionally reverts sell transactions, applies a 100% sell tax, or whitelists only the deployer. Contract scanners and "test sell" simulations are used to detect them before buying.
Extremely high required slippage, a contract that is unverified on the explorer, or a chart that only ever goes up with zero sells are all honeypot warning signs.
Related terms
Rug Pull
A scam where a token’s creators drain liquidity or dump their holdings, collapsing the price to near zero.
Slippage
The difference between a trade’s expected price and the price it actually executes at, driven by liquidity depth and volatility.
Mint Authority
The on-chain permission that allows new tokens to be created — a major rug risk if it is not revoked after launch.