What is a rug pull? The meme-coin scam explained for beginners

A rug pull is when the people behind a coin take out everything of value and leave the holders with a token nobody wants to buy. On Solana it can be over before a coin is a day old. On ripr, the known rug patterns behind one are checked and shown as warnings on the coin page before you buy.

What is a rug pull?

A rug pull is a scam in which the creator of a coin, or wallets working with the creator, takes out everything of value and leaves everyone else holding a token with no buyers. The phrase comes from pulling a rug out from under someone standing on it.

Two things about meme coins make it possible. Anyone can create one in a few minutes. And the money that gives a coin its price is not the token itself: it sits in a pool or a launch curve that somebody may be able to empty.

So ripr treats the rug-pull set-up as something to look for in advance. Before you buy, ripr shows warnings for known rug patterns — such as a creator who holds unlocked liquidity, liquidity that has already been pulled, or a coordinated launch — and it says plainly that not seeing a warning never means a coin is safe.

How a rug pull happens on a Solana meme coin

A rug pull on a Solana meme coin runs through four stages, and nothing about them is unusual until the last one.

1. The launch. Someone creates a token and puts it on a bonding curve or in a liquidity pool. A bonding curve prices a coin by formula and holds the SOL that buyers pay in, which the help centre explains in what a bonding curve is in simple terms. A liquidity pool holds SOL and tokens side by side, and a sell order is paid out of the SOL in it.
2. The set-up. The creator keeps a large share of the supply, or keeps control of the liquidity, or hands tokens to a group of wallets they funded themselves. This is the stage ripr reads: it checks coins, including brand-new ones, for coordinated-launch patterns, linked wallets and creators keeping supply, and shows anything it finds as a warning on the coin.
3. The hype. Group chats and replies push the coin, and the price climbs because new buyers keep arriving.
4. The exit. The liquidity is withdrawn, or the held supply is sold into the buying, and the price falls to almost nothing. Whoever bought last holds the token.

Stages three and four are the part traders see. Stages one and two leave traces that can be read beforehand, and that is what ripr's checks are for.

The rug-pull warnings ripr shows before you buy

ripr's rug-pattern warnings sit on the coin page and appear again in the buy flow, so you meet them before you confirm anything. There are 13 codes in total, seven of them critical and six at warning level. Four describe the shape of a rug pull:

• Liquidity held by the creator and unlocked. The money behind the price can be taken out by one person.
• Liquidity already pulled. It has been taken out, so there is nothing left to sell into.
• A coordinated or bundled launch. The earliest buyers were working together, and groups like that tend to sell into the arrivals behind them.
• A creator keeping supply, or linked wallets selling. One holder, or one group, can place a sell far bigger than the coin can absorb.

Two more pieces of wording matter, and both are ripr telling you where the checks stand rather than showing a clean result: Still checking means they have not finished on that coin yet, and checks unavailable means they could not run. ripr puts the point itself, in the app: "These are the risks we can check for. Not seeing one never means a coin is safe."

ripr warns rather than blocks, so the reading is the part left to you. In ripr's Explore screen you can also switch on the Hide warnings filter to keep flagged coins out of the lists you browse; it is off by default, and coins that have not been checked yet still appear in them.

What a rug pull looks like once it has happened

Once a rug pull has happened, the coin's chart drops almost vertically and stays flat, and the trades underneath are nearly all sells. You can read both on a ripr coin page: each chart loads the most recent 300 candles for the interval you choose, and recent trades update live as they land.

Liquidity is the real tell: it is the pool of SOL a sell order is actually paid out of. When that pool has been emptied, the price on screen is only the last trade that happened, with nothing behind it.

In the ripr app, a coin page tells you when a coin has low liquidity, has paused prices, is under review or is still being checked, and it never labels a coin safe. A coin can also be restricted after safety checks or moderation, which turns buying and selling off for it — the help centre covers that in why buying and selling can be disabled for a coin.

How to lower your chances of buying into a rug pull

To lower your chances of buying into a rug pull, read three things on the ripr coin page before you type an amount: the warnings, the holder split and the creator's other coins.

1. Read the warnings first. They sit on the coin page and again in the buy flow, before you tap Buy.
2. Look at who holds the supply. ripr shows how much of a coin's supply the top 10 and top 50 holders and the creator hold, leaving pools and vaults out. A handful of wallets holding most of it is the shape a rug pull needs.
3. Check the creator's other coins. ripr lists the other coins a coin's creator has launched, so you can judge the pattern for yourself.

Then there are the habits that help anywhere.

Start with a small test trade. Keep some SOL in your wallet for the small network fee every Solana trade pays. Confirm a coin on its own page rather than acting on a call in a chat or a stream, a point the help centre makes in how to trade more safely and how to protect yourself from stream scams.

Check the contract address too. A contract address is the unique on-chain id of a token, and no two coins share one. A name or a logo can be copied freely; an address cannot. You can search any Solana coin in ripr by name, ticker or full contract address, so paste the address a project publishes on its own channels and open whatever comes back.

For the longer version of these checks, how to spot a risky meme coin before you buy goes through them one at a time, and how to buy a meme coin safely walks a whole buy with them built in.

Frequently asked questions

How fast can a rug pull happen?

A rug pull can happen in the first hours of a coin's life, because withdrawing the liquidity or selling a held supply takes one transaction. ripr checks coins, including brand-new ones, for coordinated-launch patterns, linked wallets and creators keeping supply, and shows what it finds as a warning on the coin.

Is a rug pull the same as a coin falling in price?

No. A meme coin can fall simply because buyers stopped arriving, while a rug pull is a deliberate exit by the creator or the wallets around them, usually by removing the liquidity or selling a supply they kept. The rug-pull version is the one ripr's rug-pattern warnings describe.

Does a rug pull mean someone took coins out of my wallet?

No. In a rug pull your tokens stay in your wallet, and what disappears is the money on the other side of the market, so there is nobody left to sell them to. Tokens actually leaving a wallet is a different kind of scam, and the defence against that one is never sharing your recovery phrase.

Does ripr stop me from buying a coin with a rug-pull warning?

No. ripr shows the warning on the coin page and again in the buy flow and leaves the decision with you. Explore has a Hide warnings filter you can switch on to keep flagged coins out of your lists, and coins ripr has not checked yet still appear there.

Read the set-up, not the hype

A rug pull is a design rather than bad luck: the supply or the liquidity sits where one person can move it, and then it moves. Nobody can tell where a coin's price goes next. The set-up behind it, though, can be read before you spend anything.

Open a coin from ripr's Explore screen, read its warnings and its holder split before you type an amount, and keep the first trade small. That takes a minute, and it is the minute most people skip.

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Last verified 2 November 2026. This article is published by ripr, which builds an app for trading Solana coins. Nothing here is financial advice.