Memecoin Due Diligence Checklist: 10 Minutes Before You Buy

"DYOR" is easy to say and hard to do when a chart is ripping. This checklist turns it into a routine you can run in about ten minutes. It won't make you right every time — nothing will — but it filters out most of the tokens designed to take your money.

//Step 1: Confirm you have the right token (30 seconds)

• Contract address comes from the project's official X or website, and the official account links back to it.
• Chain is correct.
• It's not a copycat with the same ticker. See fake tokens and address poisoning.

//Step 2: Contract safety (2 minutes)

• Sell simulation passes — not a honeypot.
• Solana: mint and freeze authority revoked. See mint and freeze authority.
• Solana: no risky Token-2022 extensions. See Token-2022 risks.
• EVM: source verified, ownership renounced or held by a known multisig, no hidden owner, no proxy controlled by one wallet. See renounced ownership and proxies.
• Taxes low and not changeable. See buy and sell taxes.

If anything here fails, stop. No other strength makes up for a broken contract.

//Step 3: Liquidity (1 minute)

• LP burned or locked, with a lock that doesn't expire soon. See liquidity locks vs LP burns.
• Liquidity is deep enough that your full exit is a small fraction of one side of the pool. See why liquidity matters.
• Liquidity isn't shrinking while price holds.

//Step 4: Holders (2 minutes)

• Top 10 holders (excluding pool, burn, lockers) don't control most of the supply. See how to read top holders.
• No large connected cluster on the bubblemap. See how to read a bubblemap.
• Launch wasn't heavily bundled or sniped. See bundles, snipers and insiders.
• Dev wallet isn't selling into pumps.

//Step 5: Market activity (1 minute)

• Volume comes from many unique traders, not a few wallets. See wash trading.
• Volume-to-liquidity ratio is in a sane range. See the ratio guide.
• Buy/sell balance and short timeframes support the move. See buy/sell pressure.
• Market cap and FDV make sense, no huge unlocks ahead. See market cap vs FDV.

//Step 6: Community (2 minutes)

• Telegram has real conversation, not just admin posts and bots.
• X replies and mentions come from real accounts.
• Holders make content unprompted.
• Paid promotion isn't the only source of attention. See is a crypto community real?

//Step 7: Your plan (1 minute)

• Position size is money you can lose entirely.
• You know where you'll take profit and where you'll cut.
• You're using a wallet separate from your long-term holdings. See wallet drainers.

New to the jargon? Keep the memecoin and DEX glossary open in another tab.

//Do steps 2–6 in one paste

Paste the contract address into TrenchScore and the token page covers most of this list at once: the contract audit (honeypot simulation, authorities, ownership, taxes, liquidity lock), top holders with labels, the bubblemap and insider clusters, community and promotion signals, live market data, and a TrenchScore that summarises it all — here's a walkthrough of a token page. Then spend your remaining minutes on what no score can do: reading the Telegram, checking the X account, and deciding whether the story is one people will still care about next week.

Not financial advice. Memecoins are extremely risky, and most go to zero.