Mint, freeze and LP pulls
The switches a creator can keep on a Solana coin, what each one lets them do to you, and how to check them before you buy.
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Every coin on Solana is a token with a few settings attached. Some of those settings are switches that give one wallet power over everyone else. If the creator keeps them, they can rug you without selling a single token. The good news is that you can check them in under a minute.
Mint authority: the money printer
The mint authority is the wallet allowed to create new tokens. If it is still switched on, the creator can print as many as they like and sell them. Your share of the coin shrinks with every token printed.
What printing does to your bag (made-up coin)
A coin has 1 billion tokens. You hold 10 million of them, which is 1%. The creator still holds the mint authority.
- Step 1: The creator prints 9 billion new tokens. There are now 10 billion.
- Step 2: Your 10 million tokens are now 0.1% of the coin, not 1%.
- Step 3: The creator sells the new tokens into the pool. The price falls toward zero and the SOL in the pool moves to the creator.
A safe coin shows its mint authority as revoked, disabled or none. On pump.fun the launchpad's own program creates every coin and switches the mint authority off, so nobody can print more.
Freeze authority: the honeypot
The freeze authority can lock any holder's token account. A locked account cannot send the token anywhere, so it cannot sell. This is how a honeypot works. Buying works fine. The chart only goes up, because nobody can sell. When you try to get out, the sell fails with an error saying your account is frozen.
Stablecoins like USDC keep a freeze authority on purpose, for legal reasons. A memecoin has no good reason to keep one. If it does, walk away.
Changeable details and extra switches
The update authority can change a coin's name, picture and links after you buy. A team can swap the logo to copy a famous coin, or point the website at a scam page. Phantom's token pages show whether a coin is still mintable or mutable, meaning changeable.
Some coins use a newer token standard with optional extra settings. One of them, the permanent delegate, lets one wallet move or burn the token from anyone's wallet, and holders cannot switch it off. In September 2024 a trader reported that the RED tokens they had just bought on Solana were burned out of their wallet seven seconds after the swap went through, using exactly that setting. Checking tools flag these extras. Treat any flag you do not understand as a no.
LP pulls: taking the pool away
When you sell a coin, the SOL you receive comes out of a liquidity pool. Whoever puts SOL and tokens into a pool gets LP tokens, a receipt that lets them take their share back out. If the creator built the pool by hand and kept the receipt, they can empty it whenever they like. That is an LP pull.
An LP pull in numbers (made-up coin, before fees)
A creator opens a pool with 500 million tokens and 50 SOL, and keeps the LP tokens.
- Step 1: Buyers pile in with 200 SOL and get 400 million tokens. The pool now holds 100 million tokens and 250 SOL.
- Step 2: The creator uses the LP tokens to withdraw everything: 250 SOL and 100 million tokens.
- Step 3: The creator put in 50 SOL and walks away with 250. The buyers hold 400 million tokens and there is no pool left to sell them into.
On a pump.fun coin that came through the bonding curve, this exact move is blocked. Before a coin graduates there is no pool to pull, because the SOL sits inside the launchpad's program. When it graduates, pump.fun's own developer docs say the LP tokens from the new pool are burned, so nobody holds the receipt. A pool someone opened by hand is different, even on PumpSwap itself, because anyone can open a PumpSwap pool and keep the receipt. Bitquery counted about 451,000 pools like this opened between late October 2025 and July 2026, and 99% were later emptied, almost always by the wallet that opened them. Seeing PumpSwap on a chart is not enough. Check whether the coin came through the curve, and who holds the LP tokens.
Next: how bundling worksCheck what you learned
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This guide is for learning. It is not financial advice. Most memecoins go to zero and most people who trade them lose money. Only ever trade what you can afford to lose.