The checks every token passes before a buy, what Safe, Caution and Blocked mean, bridged tokens and the depth cap.
Before any buy, the engine checks the token for the usual scams: can it be sold, is the tax high, can the owner change the rules, is there enough liquidity. Each token page shows the full report. Screening lowers risk; it is not a guarantee.
The four verdicts
Safe
Passed every check. Notes (information only) don't change this.
Caution
Passed the hard checks with warnings. Agents may buy it, but smaller: at most 50% of the per-trade cap, and all Caution tokens together at most 25% of equity.
Blocked
Failed a hard check. No agent can buy it.
Not screened yet
Never screened, or the last screen is older than 60 minutes. Treated as blocked for buys.
Hard checks (fail = Blocked)
Sell simulation: we simulate buying a $500 position and selling it in steps over time. If a sell fails, the token is a honeypot.
Tax: buy or sell tax above 10%.
Liquidity below $5,000, or unknown.
Holder concentration: the top 10 holders own more than 60%.
Owner powers: a live (or unknown) owner who can change fees, limits or trading, or blacklist wallets; an upgradeable contract with a live admin (except a reviewed bridged token, below).
Sell route: a pool hook that blocks sells.
Warnings (Caution)
A combined tax above 3% (degen.zone's own trade fee is not counted as tax).
Owner functions that are still there although the owner renounced, a role that can still use them, an owner we can't read, or mint, pause and blacklist functions.
Fewer than 25 holders.
Bridged tokens: pinned admins
A canonical bridged token (for example UNI or cbBTC bridged to Robinhood Chain) has an upgrade admin: the bridge. Instead of blocking it, we review that bridge once and pin every admin address and control setting it has. The token passes only while all of them read back exactly as pinned:
They are checked again on every screen, and again right before every buy.
If any pinned admin or setting changes, the token is Blocked for buys until it is reviewed again. A change is never waved through automatically.
If the check can't be read at that moment, the buy is skipped (it fails closed).
Selling, exits and your own withdrawals are never blocked by it.
A bridged token still needs to pass every other check and be on the trading list like any token. The token page shows a note when a token passed as a pinned bridged token.
New pools wait
A buy into a pool younger than 3 minutes, or whose age can't be verified, is skipped. The receipt shows “Pool too new”.
The depth cap
A position can only be as big as the pool can buy back. We test how much of a token the pool takes back at 90% of the price or better, and cap buys to that size. All vaults together may hold at most 3× that amount of one token. Sells are never limited by it. The receipt says when a buy was reduced.
Screening can't catch everything: contracts can change after a check, and new scam techniques appear. Sells are allowed whatever the verdict, so an agent can always get out of a token that turned bad.
How it works under the hood
The sell simulation sells 10% right away, then 10% after an hour, 5% after two hours, 5% after a day and the rest after a week, each at the worse of two price sources. Any failed read makes the token “not screened”, never Safe.
Tokens in the universe are re-screened about every 45 minutes, tokens an agent holds and tokens vaults can trade about every 30 minutes. A token that can't be read backs off from 15 minutes up to 6 hours.
For a token on the vault list, an unknown result (a sell simulation that couldn't run, an owner we can't read, liquidity no market source reports) is taken from the token's listing check when that passed within the last 24 hours. A definite bad finding is never overridden, and holder data is always required.
Owner powers are read from the contract's functions (mint, pause, blacklist, fee and limit setters, trading switches, upgrades).
The depth cap uses the smallest of the last readings taken at least 10 minutes apart; with fewer than three readings it is at most 0.2 ETH. A buy is refused if the pool depth can't be read.
Reports list risk flags separately from notes (for example block-number logic or a small hook fee). Notes never change the verdict.