TL;DR
A honeypot is a scam token designed so that buyers can purchase it but cannot sell it, trapping their funds permanently while the creator extracts value.
Honeypots use various mechanisms to prevent selling. The simplest method on Solana is using freeze authority to freeze buyer accounts after purchase. More sophisticated honeypots use custom programs with hidden sell restrictions, extremely high transfer fees via Token-2022, or modified swap logic that rejects sell transactions. The token appears to trade normally — you can see buys on the chart — but sells fail.
Freeze honeypots use active freeze authority to lock wallets. Fee honeypots set 99-100% transfer fees so sells return zero tokens. Allowlist honeypots only let whitelisted wallets sell. Liquidity honeypots let you sell but manipulate the pool so you receive almost nothing. Some honeypots are time-delayed — selling works initially to build trust, then gets disabled after enough buyers are trapped.
Run every token through Token Scanner before buying. Check that both mint and freeze authorities are revoked. Look at the transaction history — if there are many buys but zero or very few sells, it’s a honeypot. Try a small test buy and sell before committing larger amounts. Tools like RugCheck simulate sell transactions to detect if selling is possible.