In short
- A honeypot is any contract where value goes in and does not come out.
- Detection simulates a sell read-only; it never signs or sends a transaction.
- A passing simulation describes now, not after you buy.
The mechanics
The crudest honeypot rejects any transfer that is not a buy. More careful ones allow a handful of early sells so the chart looks alive, then close once enough liquidity has arrived. Others never block a sell at all and simply set the sell tax to a level that takes essentially everything.
A fourth family does not restrict selling when you look at it. It retains the ability to start. A contract whose owner can enable a blacklist, pause transfers or raise the sell tax is not a honeypot at scan time and can become one in a single transaction afterwards.
How it is detected
A sell path is simulated read-only against the chain's main router — an eth_call that asks what would happen, with no wallet connected, nothing signed and no gas spent. A call that reverts where a normal token would succeed is treated as critical observed risk.
Alongside that, the contract is read for the functions that gate transfers: blacklist and whitelist entries, pause switches, trading-enabled flags and tax setters. A security provider is queried independently and disagreements between sources are recorded and reduce confidence rather than being resolved silently.
What a pass does not mean
A successful simulation is a statement about one moment along one route. If the owner retains the power to change trading rules, that statement has a short shelf life — which is why the powers are reported separately from the simulation result rather than folded into it.
There are also technical reasons a simulation can be inconclusive: liquidity that lives only in a concentrated-liquidity pool, or on a DEX outside the simulated path. Those cases are reported as unavailable rather than as a pass.
This guide is educational. Cryptoassets are high risk and you could lose all money used to buy them. ScanZX reports observed warning signs and data gaps at scan time — it never certifies that a token is safe. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell.