Have you fallen for a honey pot?

A honey pot has several meanings depending on the context in which it is used. From the word formation , it comprises two words, Honey + pot . Thus the first meaning available in most dictionaries is

"a container for honey".

A second meaning which is somewhat related to the origins of honey.

It is common knowledge that honey is obtained from honey combs located in the bee hive which is usually a hub of activities due to bees coming and going in the course of fulfilling their respective duties in the hive. Thus the second meaning of honey pot is:

"Something which attracts people in great numbers".

In computing circles according to an article in Wikipedia, it is a computer security mechanism put in place to detect, deflect or possibly act as a countermeasure against use of information systems in an unauthorized manner. It is designed in such a way that it mimics a legitimate part of a site which holds information or assets that the attackers consider valuable.

Meanwhile in actual sense it is isolated from the real target of the hackers and monitored without  knowledge of the attackers with the capability of analysing or blocking their activities. Honey pots are useful tools in protecting IT systems from attacks, the idea behind the concept which simply put is offering something attractive to the target which it will never get while getting it to willingly release something or information in its possession. In some sense it is a form of baiting those with bad intent to execute attacks which will never succeed in order to detect loopholes or weak points within the security infrastructure of IT systems.

However, the concept behind honey pots can also be exploited for malicious intent especially in the crypto space. When this is done, we usually have tokens which offer juicy prospects or returns on investments which are marketed or shilled to attract buyers only for such buyers to be left with tokens that are worthless after being purchased. This is because the creators of the tokens never intended for them to to trade able . Such tokens are only intended for one way traffic of being bought alone and can never be sold.

Hence it is very important to properly research about new tokens that are marketed as going to explode in value in no time as this could be a ploy to get people to lower their guards and go all in with investing. What makes this scheme all the more convincing is that buying such tokens usually proceeds seamlessly without hitches thus giving no room for suspicion on the part of the buyer that the process of selling when the time comes would be any different.

In order to help people in the crypto space detect such potential scams, some sites now offer a sort of honey pot checker. What these tools do essentially is to check if the contracts of tokens are verified and if such tokens can be bought and sold. The tool thereafter generates the results of these checks while warning that even if a token passes theses checks, it is not a guarantee that such token is free from being a honey pot.

A honey pot checker is available at honeypot.rugdoc.io
The honey pot checker available at the above link supports 4 chains. The chains are:
1. Binance
2. Polygon
3. Avalanche
4. Fantom

To use the tool follow the steps below
1. Select the chain on which the token is found from the drop down list

2. Enter the token's contact address

3. Click start
After following these steps, the tool will display the results or outcome of its checks.

The screen shots below show the results of the checker tool for two tokens. The first is for a known trusted token.

The second is for one which is suspected to be a honeypot as the Devs for the said token have gone silent since December, 2021 while the token cannot be sold on the same platform on which it was bought.

Hence in order to avoid falling for or falling into a honey pot , always DYOR in order for your funds to stay SAFU.