A rug pull is when the people behind a token take the value out of it. On Robinhood Chain, how rug pulls work comes down to three moves: pulling the liquidity, minting new supply, or blocking sells. Each leaves a different on-chain trace, and each is checkable before you buy.
This page describes patterns, not incidents. It names no project, because naming one teaches you a name and describing a mechanism teaches you a check you can run on every token you ever look at. The one-paragraph definition lives in the glossary entry for rug pull; what follows is the anatomy.
How rug pulls work: three patterns
The liquidity pull
The oldest and simplest version. Someone funds a pool, the token trades, buyers arrive, and then the pool position is withdrawn. The tokens in your wallet still exist afterward — the pool that gave them a price does not. Sell orders find nothing on the other side, and the quoted price collapses toward zero on the first attempt.
What makes it possible is ownership. A liquidity position belongs to whoever holds it, and on Robinhood Chain that position is usually a Uniswap v3 NFT. Whoever holds the NFT can remove the liquidity at will unless something prevents it. That is the specific gap a liquidity lock closes, and it is the only gap it closes.
What you can read beforehand: the locked share of the pool, the release timestamp, and the pool's depth. What you cannot read: intent.
The supply pull
Here the pool stays. The supply changes underneath it.
If a token contract keeps a live mint function, the owner can create new tokens after launch and sell them into the existing pool. Every holder is diluted without a single transfer from their wallet. A variant achieves the same effect without minting: a large allocation held from launch by one address, or split across several addresses to look like distribution, sold gradually into a pool too thin to absorb it.
Both are readable in advance. Check whether the mint function is still callable and whether ownership was renounced, then read the holder distribution for wallets big enough to move price alone. A locked pool does nothing about either — the lock holds liquidity in place while supply arrives on top of it.
The sell-side block
The third pattern never removes anything. It stops you leaving.
A honeypot contract permits buys and blocks sells, usually through a transfer restriction, a permitted-address list, or a sell fee set high enough to make exit pointless. The chart looks healthy precisely because nobody can sell into it. Holders discover the problem one at a time, and by then the position is at full size. The mechanism is unpacked in honeypots: how they work, and the diagnosis tree for a failed sale is in I can't sell my token.
The counter is behavioral and costs almost nothing: sell a token's worth immediately after your first buy, while the position is still small enough that a blocked exit tells you something for free.
What a lock stops, and what it doesn't
| Pattern | What happens | What a liquidity lock does |
|---|---|---|
| Liquidity pull | Pool position withdrawn, price collapses | Prevents withdrawal until the release timestamp |
| Supply pull | New or held supply sold into the pool | Nothing — supply is a separate mechanism |
| Sell-side block | Contract permits buys, blocks sells | Nothing — the restriction is in the token contract |
Read that table as the honest scope of the tool. A lock is a strong answer to one question and silence on the other two, which is why a lock badge is the start of a read rather than the end of one. The full field-by-field version is read a liquidity lock in 60 seconds.
As of —pending, —pending of new Robinhood Chain launches locked liquidity at creation, per Locksley's contract reads. Locked at birth lists the tokens whose pools were locked at the moment they were created.
When there is no lock to read
"No lock found" means we found none — not that none exists. Locksley does not yet index every locker.
An empty lock panel is a question, not a verdict. It can mean liquidity is genuinely unlocked, or that the position sits in a contract we do not yet read. Either way the next step is the same: check the pool on the explorer, or ask the project which contract holds the position and until what timestamp. A project that locked its liquidity can answer in one line, and a project that locked through Team Finance can lock and show it — our sister product, disclosed plainly, at $150 per liquidity lock as of August 2026 plus gas in ETH.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a rug pull and a token that just went to zero?
A rug pull is a deliberate act by people with control over the contract or the pool: withdrawing liquidity, minting and selling supply, or blocking sales. A token going to zero is what happens when buyers stop arriving and sellers keep coming. The chain records both the same way — price falling — so the distinction lives in what the deploying and owning addresses actually did.
Does locked liquidity mean a token cannot be rugged?
No. A lock stops the pool position being withdrawn before its release date, and nothing else. Supply can still be minted or sold into the pool by large holders, and a token contract can still restrict selling. Those are separate mechanisms with separate checks, and locked liquidity has no effect on either of them.
Can a rug pull be reversed or refunded?
No. Transactions on Robinhood Chain are final once confirmed, and there is no operator who can undo them. No custodian holds the funds, so there is nobody to appeal to. This is why the checks happen before the buy rather than after it, and why the size of a first position in an unfamiliar token is itself a decision worth making deliberately.
“No lock found” means we found none, not that none exists: we do not index other lockers yet, and it is never a claim about the project.
Anatomy of a token page
Read nextHow to check a liquidity lock in 60 seconds
How to check a liquidity lock on Robinhood Chain in under a minute: read the source contract, the locked share, the owner and the release date.
Read nextHoneypots: how they work
A honeypot token lets you buy and blocks the sell. The contract mechanisms behind it, the trade-history signals, and what a passed test does not prove.
Read nextHolder concentration: what actually matters
Token holder concentration shows how much supply sits in how few wallets. How to read the list, which big holders are contracts, why thresholds are heuristics.
Read nextI can't sell my token — diagnosis and fixes
Three causes explain almost every failed sell on Robinhood Chain: slippage, liquidity that is gone, or a contract that blocks the sell. Tell which one you have.
See it liveHow to lock liquidity, step by step
How to lock liquidity on Robinhood Chain in six steps: find your Uniswap v3 position NFT, set a release date, approve, confirm. Costs, gas and what shows after.
Do itLock liquidity on Robinhood Chain
Lock liquidity on Robinhood Chain through Team Finance: the Uniswap v3 position is held until a timestamp you set. Steps, price, and what a lock proves.
