No checklist makes a memecoin "safe". Most new tokens fail even when the contract is clean. What these checks do is remove the tokens that are rigged against you from the start: the ones you can't sell, the ones that tax you out, and the ones the creator can still change after you're in.
The order matters. Each check is cheaper to run than the next one, and the first one alone rules out the worst traps. If a token fails any step, you can stop there. Found the coin on a chart first? MoonRadar vs DexScreener shows which of these checks a chart tool covers and which it leaves to you. Still looking for the coin itself? How to find new crypto coins early covers where launches show up first and how to filter them down to this list.
Before step 1, make sure you have the right coin. Names and tickers can be copied by anyone, so a ticker search often turns up clones. Run every check below on the contract address the project itself posted (here is how to spot a copycat token). If the coin turned up in your wallet without you buying it, this checklist isn't the right tool: start with scam tokens in your wallet.
Simulate a sell before you buy. A sell simulation runs a buy and then a sell against the live contract without sending a real transaction, then reports whether the sell went through and how much came back. If the sell reverts or returns close to nothing, the token is a honeypot.
This is the only check that tests the contract's real behaviour instead of what it claims. A contract can look normal, with a verified source and a renounced owner, and still contain a blacklist or a transfer rule that only lets certain wallets sell. The simulation doesn't care how it's hidden. It just tries to sell. The full set of honeypot tells is in how to spot a honeypot token. If you're picking a tool for this step, MoonRadar vs Honeypot.is covers which chains each one checks and what a passed sell test still misses.
The tell people miss: a sell that passes today can fail tomorrow if the owner can still edit the contract. That's why step 3 exists.
Read both taxes and compare them. Many tokens charge a fee on each trade, and a fair one is usually small and the same both ways. The pattern to walk away from is a low buy tax with a much higher sell tax, for example 3% in and 30% out. You can technically sell, but you lose a large chunk doing it. That's a soft honeypot.
Also check whether the tax can change. If the contract has a function to set fees and the owner still controls it, today's 3% can become 99% after you buy. The taxes you see now are only as good as the owner's power to change them. More on tax traps and fee switches in what is a sell tax.
Check whether ownership is renounced and what powers are left. An active owner can often raise taxes, pause trading, blacklist wallets or mint new supply. Renouncing gives up those powers, which is why it's the most quoted safety signal.
But renounced does not always mean locked down (the full breakdown is in what renounced ownership means). Watch for three gaps:
Check two things: how deep the pool is and who can pull it. Thin liquidity means even an honest token can't absorb your sell without heavy price impact, and the liquidity figure on chart sites counts both sides of the pool, so your real exit is about half of it at best. A large pool next to a tiny market cap can also be a setup to attract buyers.
Then check the LP tokens. Burned means they were sent to a dead address and the pool can never be withdrawn. Locked means a locker contract holds them until a set date, after which the creator gets them back. A short lock that ends in days protects you for days. And neither one stops a malicious contract from blocking your sell. Locked liquidity only means the pool can't be pulled. It says nothing about whether your sell goes through. The lock traps, like partial and short locks, are in liquidity locked vs burned.
Open the holders list and see how much the top wallets own, leaving out the pool and burn address. If a handful of fresh wallets hold most of the supply, a few sells can drain the pool before you react.
The trap here is that holder percentages can lie. A deployer can split supply across dozens of new wallets at launch so no single one looks large. If many top holders were funded from the same wallet, or were all created and filled in the same block, treat them as one holder (here is how a bundled launch hides its supply). Holders only show who is still in - to see who already took profit, and whether those wallets trace back to the team, check the token's top traders. Wallets with a real record across many tokens are the ones worth following, covered in how to track smart-money wallets.
Look up the wallet that deployed the contract and check its earlier tokens. Deployers who rug once tend to do it again, often with the same contract code and a new name. A history of tokens that went to zero within hours, or of pulled liquidity, is the loudest warning on this list. The four ways a rug plays out, and the tell for each, are in how to spot a rug pull.
A clean history isn't proof of anything, since fresh wallets cost nothing. But a bad history is close to proof, and it takes a minute to check. How to find the deployer, read its past launches and follow the funding trail is in how to check a token deployer.
Doing all six manually means a block explorer, a separate honeypot checker, a liquidity locker site and some wallet tracing, for every coin. On a fast launch, the move is often over before you finish. That's where most people skip steps, and the step you skip is the one that gets you.
MoonRadar runs the contract side of this list on every coin it flags, and on any token you paste into the scanner. The scanner is free with no sign-up. On Robinhood Chain and ARC, which GoPlus doesn't cover, it runs its own buy-then-sell test on-chain through the real pool and measures exit depth, how much you could sell before the price collapses (the HOOD specifics, including Uniswap v4 pools, are in the Robinhood Chain memecoin guide, and the Arc specifics, including Uniswap v3 fee tiers and price ranges, are in the Arc token guide); on BNB it runs GoPlus's buy-and-sell simulation. It reads the buy and sell tax (over 20% is flagged as a tax trap), checks whether the owner is renounced or still active, measures liquidity (and for coins it calls, how much of the LP is locked or burned), and checks the deployer's rug history. The result is a shield score and a one-line Safety Grade (Looks clear, Caution or Avoid) you see before you trade. Honeypots are shown and labelled, not hidden.
It covers HOOD, BNB, ARC and Solana, and it's non-custodial: you sign every trade in your own wallet. A good shield score means the contract checks passed. It doesn't mean the coin will go up.
Scan a token on MoonRadar