Disclosure: I help maintain 4K, a small Solana community project, and I use it as the worked example below. This article was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by a human before publishing. Nothing here is financial advice.
Scam tokens copy names, tickers and logos. On Solana the one thing that cannot be copied is the mint address: the public key of the token mint account. Every check below starts from that address.
1. Get the mint address from the project's own website (10 s)
Not from a DM, a reply, a screenshot or a search result. Open the official site you already trust and copy the address from there. If the project has no website that publishes its mint, that already tells you something.
2. Paste it into an explorer (10 s)
Use any Solana explorer (Solscan, Solana Explorer, SolanaFM). Make sure the page shows a token mint, not a wallet or a token account. The name and logo on that page are metadata: useful, but anyone can set the same name and logo on a different mint.
3. Check the two authorities (15 s)
| Field | What it means if it is set | What it means if it is disabled / none |
|---|---|---|
| Mint authority | Someone can still create new tokens and dilute holders | Supply cannot grow beyond what exists |
| Freeze authority | Someone can freeze tokens in your account | Nobody can freeze your balance |
A set authority is not automatically a scam (some stablecoins keep a freeze authority on purpose), but you should know who holds it and why.
What this check does not prove: that the team is honest, that liquidity will stay, or that the price means anything.
4. If it is a Token-2022 mint, read the extensions (10 s)
Token-2022 mints can carry extensions such as transfer fees, a transfer hook (custom code that runs on every transfer) or a permanent delegate (an address that can move tokens from any account). Explorers list these on the mint page. A permanent delegate in particular deserves an explanation from the project.
5. Look at holders and liquidity yourself (15 s)
Open the holders tab. Are a few wallets holding most of the supply? Then open the pool on a DEX screener: how much liquidity is really there? Small liquidity means even a small sale moves the price a lot. Holder counts and volume can be inflated by bots, so treat them as signals, not proof.
Red flags that end the check immediately
- "Guaranteed returns", "last chance", "send X, get 2X"
- Someone from "the team" DMs you first
- Anyone asks for your seed phrase or asks you to sign a transaction to "verify" or "claim"
Worked example: 4K
The 4K site (https://4k.style/) publishes the mint B86RCJ7ai5pedHkfcpPBFaK93ed7uCfT3K7qG7qL1TxA. Pasting it into an explorer shows a standard SPL token with mint authority and freeze authority disabled. That rules out new supply and frozen balances, and nothing more. The liquidity is small, and the explorer will tell you the rest. Don't trust us; run the check.
If this helped, the best thanks is to teach the 60-second check to one person who is new to crypto.
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