7-Point Solana Token Due Diligence Checklist

Most rugged trades are not bad luck — they're predictable failures of a thirty-second due-diligence pass that the trader skipped. Solana has cheap, fast, public chain data; you can interrogate any new token before you fund the swap. This is the checklist we run inside MoonHydra's optional RugCheck buy gate, written out so you can run it manually wherever you're trading.

1. Holder distribution — top 10 + top 20 concentration

Open the token on Solscan. Click the Holders tab. Look at the top-10 concentration. Healthy fresh launches sit at 20–35% in the top 10, with the LP/burn/treasury wallets as the largest entries. Red flag: a single non-LP wallet holding > 8%, or the top-3 holders being unidentified wallets (no exchange, no LP marker, no team multisig).

Pump.fun launches are different: the bonding-curve contract holds the supply pre-graduation, which inflates the top-1 to ~80%. That's normal. What matters is who holds the sniper bags — the next 5–10 wallets after the bonding curve.

2. LP status — locked, burned, or rugpull-loaded?

For post-graduation tokens on Raydium / Meteora / Orca, find the pool address and check the LP token holdings:

• Burned (LP token sent to 1nc1nerator11111111111111111111111111111111): irreversible, no rugpull risk on the pool itself.
• Locked (LP token in a known locker like Team Finance, Streamflow): time-locked but unlockable — check the unlock date.
• Held by the deployer wallet: rugpull-loaded. The dev can pull LP at any time. Pass unless you're scalping with micro-position sizing on a sub-30-second time horizon.

3. Mint authority + Freeze authority

On Solscan's token page, scroll to Token Info. Check both:

• Mint Authority — if active (a real wallet address), the deployer can mint infinite new supply, instantly diluting your bag to zero. Should be null/revoked for anything you hold past a quick scalp.
• Freeze Authority — if active, the deployer can freeze any holder's tokens, including yours. You can't sell. This is the favorite tool of a specific class of Solana rugs. Should be null/revoked.

Honest exception: very fresh pump.fun launches have authorities revoked at graduation. Pre-graduation, the bonding-curve contract holds them and they're harmless.

4. RugCheck score — and read the actual flags

RugCheck.xyz aggregates the above plus social/contract signals into a 0–100 score. A score floor is fine as a coarse filter (we use one in the MoonHydra sniper config — see /features/pumpfun-sniper), but the score alone is not enough. Always open the page and read the flag list. A 70 score with a "Single holder owns 35%" flag is more dangerous than a 50 score with three minor warnings.

5. Top-trader audit — are profitable wallets buying or selling?

On GMGN or Birdeye, look at the top traders tab for the token. You want to see:

• Wallets with a verified track record on Solana (not fresh wallets) holding or accumulating.
• No known scam wallets in the top-50 (rug runners cluster around the tokens they deploy).
• Reasonable PnL spread — if the top-3 wallets are all up > 500% and just bought 30 seconds before you, you're the exit liquidity.

6. Social check — genuine community vs paid hype

A 30-second social pass:

• Search the ticker on X. Real engagement (replies, quote tweets, meme variations) ≠ shill threads with bot-replied "looks cooking" comments.
• Check the Telegram group. New rugs often have copy-paste mods, pinned messages older than the token, and a Russian-bot member spike from the launch hour.
• Look up the dev wallet on Solscan. If it has 12 prior token deploys all going to zero, that's a serial rugger.

7. Sniper / frontrun detection — were the first 3 blocks bots?

Open the token's Transfers tab on Solscan. Look at the first 5–10 buys after launch. If all of them are within 200ms of the LP-add and use small SOL amounts (0.05–0.5 SOL each), you're looking at sniper-bot bags that are now waiting to dump on you. Their cost basis is at the very floor; your cost basis is whatever you pay now. Asymmetric.

This is also why a snipe-yourself strategy works — if you're going to buy at all, be the first sniper, not the late retail. See our pump.fun sniper guide for the setup.

How MoonHydra uses these checks

The MoonHydra trading bot ships an optional RugCheck buy gate (configurable in /security) that blocks /buy if the token's RugCheck score is below your threshold. The sniper engine runs an extended filter chain — see the sniper simulator to dry-run your filter math against historical launches without spending SOL.

The remaining six checks are inherently manual — they require judgment. Run them as a habit. Most rugs are not the smartest rugs; they're the ones where the holder pasted a CA without looking at Solscan first.

Open the bot: @moonhydrabot. Follow the work: @moonhydra.