Smart Contract Risk

A 'Honeypot' is a token that you can buy, but you cannot sell. Malicious developers modify the standard ERC20 transfer function to revert transactions unless the sender is whitelisted or the contract owner.

Source review can identify sell restrictions, address lists, mutable fees, privileged minting, pausability, proxies, and owner-only branches—but verified source is not a complete safety proof. Runtime state, proxy implementations, external calls, delegate calls, upgrade keys, and obfuscated behavior can change the result.

Use multiple layers: verify chain and address, inspect proxy and privileged roles, simulate a buy and sell on a fork or trusted service, check transfer restrictions and liquidity ownership, review deployer history, and cap exposure. A successful small test can still be selectively whitelisted or followed by an upgrade.