How to spot a rug pull on fomo before you buy

You spot a rug pull on fomo the same way you spot one anywhere: before you buy. Open the token page and check four things: whether the liquidity is locked or burned, how much of the supply the top wallets hold, whether real people are selling as well as buying, and whether fomo has put a warning label on it. If the token fails any of them, skip it. Once the pool is drained, no app, including fomo, can give the money back.

What is a rug pull, and which kinds should you expect?

fomo’s own explainer defines a rug pull as “a type of crypto scam where token creators attract buyers, inflate the price, and then drain the value.” It is one of the biggest risks in memecoin trading, and it matters on fomo because the app gives you one-tap access to fresh tokens on several chains. fomo describes four patterns, and each one leaves a different trace:

The slow rug is the hardest to catch, which is why a single check is never enough. If you are new to the app itself, start with our overview of the fomo trading app before reading token pages.

What does a fomo token page show that helps?

According to fomo’s guide to reading token stats, every token page carries the numbers you need for a first screen, without leaving the app:

• Liquidity. The value sitting in the trading pool. Low liquidity means bigger slippage and harder exits.
• Market cap and 24-hour volume. How big the token already is and how much it is actually traded.
• Holders and top holder concentration. The number of unique wallets, the percentage held by the largest ones, and a detailed holder list.
• Buy/sell ratio. Buy volume against sell volume, plus buyer-versus-seller counts.
• Charts with other traders’ trades. Candlestick or line charts with other fomo users’ buys and sells overlaid.

The page also has an About section with the project’s description and its official links, which is the only place a contract address should come from. A copycat token with a familiar name but a different contract is one of the oldest tricks around, and fomo calls copied names or logos “almost always scams.”

Which numbers are red flags?

fomo publishes rough thresholds across its guides. They are rules of thumb, not guarantees, and the guides do not all use the same cut-off:

Outside the numbers, fomo lists softer warnings too: guaranteed returns or “100x guaranteed” promises, celebrity endorsements, no X account or community, and “hundreds of bot-generated social media posts with no genuine engagement.” One green flag is specific to fomo: experienced, profitable traders from the fomo leaderboard holding the token. Treat that as context, not as permission, because a leaderboard trader can sell faster than you can.

How do you check whether liquidity is really locked?

Locked liquidity means the pool’s liquidity provider tokens sit in a smart contract that blocks anyone, including the creator, from withdrawing them for a set period. fomo calls it “one of the most important safety indicators to check before buying a new token,” and separates three states:

• Unlocked: the creator can remove the pool at any time. The riskiest case.
• Time-locked: locked for a fixed period, for example 30 days, six months or a year. When it expires, the creator can withdraw.
• Burned: the provider tokens were sent to a dead address and destroyed. The most secure option.

fomo’s advice is never to take the project’s word for it. Look up the provider tokens on a block explorer to see whether they went to a known locking contract or were burned, then check how long the lock lasts (a 7-day lock protects you far less than a one-year lock) and what percentage is locked. Its example: if only 20% is locked, 80% can still be pulled. Watch for tokens that trade in several pools with only one of them locked, and for an active mint function, which lets a creator print new tokens and dump them even with the pool locked. Even a genuine lock does not make a token safe.

What do fomo’s warning labels and “Unverified” tag tell you?

fomo’s help center says every token carries a status showing how far fomo has reviewed it:

• Verified tokens have a blue check on the logo and show no warning labels. The fomo team has reviewed them, but verification does not guarantee price performance or remove all risk. The thresholds are in our guide to how fomo token verification works.
• Unverified tokens show an “Unverified token” note above the Buy and Sell buttons. Every token that has just graduated from its bonding curve starts here, so most brand-new memecoins will carry it.
• Warning labels appear on tokens with signs of risk or fraud. fomo gives examples that read like a rug pull checklist: a contract that blocks sells, illiquid pools and developers removing liquidity. A “High taxes” label shows the buy, sell or transfer fee. On some EVM tokens, a serious unresolved finding in the pool’s security audit also triggers a warning.

Severe warnings ask you to confirm before buying, and some disable Buy or Sell entirely. fomo’s instruction is simple: if you see a warning, stop interacting with the token until you understand why it was labeled. The reverse is not true, though. fomo also says not every risky contract is flagged immediately, and a token can show no warning when you buy it and a “Zero liquidity” label later. No label is not a clean bill of health.

What should you do if a token you hold starts to rug?

fomo’s guide gives four steps, in this order:

1. Try to sell straight away rather than waiting for a recovery.
2. Raise slippage if the sell will not go through. A fast-moving rug may need a higher tolerance to execute; how the setting works is in our fomo slippage guide.
3. If you cannot sell, accept the loss. Do not send more money to average down.
4. Warn others so fewer people get caught.

If the pool is already empty or the contract blocks sales, the token shows a value you cannot realize; our page on why a token will not sell on fomo walks through what support can and cannot do. Trades confirmed on-chain cannot be reversed, so be wary of anyone who contacts you offering to recover rugged funds. That is a second scam, and our guide to fomo scams and token traps covers the fake-support pattern.

How can a beginner lower the odds of getting rugged?

fomo’s position is that “no memecoin is completely ‘safe,’” so the aim is to filter out the obvious traps, not to find a risk-free trade. A short routine covers most of it:

• Start from the verified filter, and treat anything unverified as needing every check above.
• Read liquidity, top holders and the buy/sell ratio before every buy, not after.
• Skip tokens younger than a day or two unless you accept that the money may vanish.
• Keep positions small in very new tokens and size them as money you can lose completely.
• Remember fees: every buy and sell pays fomo’s fee, and off Solana you pay the network fee too, so the fomo fee schedule matters even on a token that holds up.

Wallet security is a separate question from token risk; our fomo safety page covers who controls the keys. If memecoins are what brought you here, our walkthrough of how to buy meme coins on fomo explains costs by chain, and the fomo referral code page explains the fee discount you can only add when you create the account.

Rug pull questions