Honeypot
In short A honeypot is a token whose contract lets people buy but blocks or cripples their sells, trapping holders while the deployer cashes out.
A honeypot is a token whose contract lets anyone buy but stops most people from selling. The deployer, or a small list of approved wallets, can still sell freely. From the outside it looks like a normal token with a rising chart, because every buy goes through and pushes the price up. The people holding it just can't get out.
The trap lives in the contract's transfer logic. A sell is just a transfer to the liquidity pool, so the code can check where tokens are going and revert the transaction, charge a tax of 90 percent or more, or allow only whitelisted addresses. Other versions give the owner a trading switch or a blacklist function, so buyers are frozen after they enter. Some stay clean for the first few hours to build volume, then flip.
This matters because the loss is usually total. Your money went into the pool and the deployer drains it by selling through an exempt wallet, so there is nothing left to recover. The usual signals mislead you here: price, volume, and holder count all rise, since only buys succeed. A honeypot differs from a classic rug pull in that liquidity may never be removed; it simply can't be sold into by you.
Before buying, run the token address through a scanner that simulates a sell, and read the contract on a block explorer. Red flags are unverified source code, an owner-adjustable tax, a trading toggle, a blacklist, or an upgradeable proxy that can swap the logic later. Look at recent transactions too: if many wallets bought and almost none sold, ask why. On Solana, check whether the token keeps a freeze authority.
A small test buy helps, but it proves little. Some contracts allow early sells and switch later, and scanners can't see behavior that hasn't been triggered yet. Treat a clean scan as lower risk, not safe, and size positions assuming a new token could still trap you.