Locking or burning liquidity stops the person who created a trading pool from withdrawing the money in it. That blocks the classic rug pull, where the pool is emptied in one transaction. It does not stop anyone from selling their tokens into the pool, which is how most Solana memecoins lose their value today. A burned pool is a good sign, but a small one.
What liquidity is
When you buy or sell a memecoin on a decentralised exchange, you trade against a liquidity pool. The pool holds two things: the memecoin and something people value, usually SOL. When you buy, you put SOL in and take tokens out. When you sell, you put tokens in and take SOL out. The price is set by the ratio between the two sides.
Whoever adds money to the pool receives LP tokens (liquidity provider tokens). These are a receipt. Hand them back to the pool and you get your share of both sides out. That is the power that matters: whoever holds the LP tokens can withdraw the SOL.
Three states of liquidity
| State | What happens to the LP tokens | Can the pool be withdrawn? |
|---|---|---|
| Unlocked | Held in an ordinary wallet | Yes, at any time |
| Locked | Held by a locker program until a set date | Not until the lock ends |
| Burned | Sent to an address nobody controls, or destroyed | No, never |
Unlocked
The creator, or whoever added the liquidity, can pull it whenever they like. This is the setup for a classic liquidity rug: buyers push the price up, the pool fills with SOL, and the LP holder withdraws it.
Locked
The LP tokens sit in a locker program that will not release them until a chosen date. This protects buyers only until that date. Look at when the lock ends and how much of the LP is covered. A lock on 20% of the LP leaves 80% free to withdraw.
Burned
The LP tokens are destroyed or sent to an address with no owner. Nobody can ever withdraw the pool directly. This is the strongest version.
How pump.fun handles liquidity
Coins on pump.fun start on a bonding curve: pump.fun's own pricing system, where you buy from and sell to the curve rather than a normal pool. There are no LP tokens at this stage, so there is nothing for a creator to pull.
When enough has been bought, the coin "graduates" and moves to a normal pool on PumpSwap, pump.fun's own exchange. According to pump.fun's documentation, the LP tokens for that pool are burned at migration, so the liquidity can only leave through trading. In the RugCheck reports we sampled while writing this guide, graduated pump.fun coins showed their PumpSwap pool as 100% locked.
At the time of writing (October 2026), pump.fun has also switched on a feature called BOOST by default. According to reporting by The Block in July 2026, it uses part of the migration liquidity to make automatic buys of the coin in the first five minutes after graduation, then burns the tokens it bought. Be aware that this creates buying in those first minutes that does not come from real traders.
For more on how pump.fun works, see what is pump.fun.
What locks and burns do not protect
Holders selling
This is the big one. A burned pool cannot be withdrawn, but anyone holding tokens can sell them into it. Each sale takes SOL out of the pool. If insiders hold 30% of the supply and sell it all, they can take most of the SOL in the pool, and the price falls accordingly. The effect on your wallet is almost identical to a liquidity pull.
Liquidity draining over time
Because every sell removes SOL, a burned pool can shrink to almost nothing through ordinary selling. "Liquidity burned" tells you who cannot withdraw the pool. It tells you nothing about how much will still be in it tomorrow. Watch the liquidity figure on DexScreener, not just the lock status.
Other pools
A coin can trade in more than one pool. In the reports we looked at, many graduated coins had a burned main pool alongside smaller pools on other exchanges with no lock at all. Usually those extra pools are small. Still, check where the liquidity actually sits.
Mint and freeze authority
A locked pool means nothing if the creator can print new tokens or freeze your wallet. See mint and freeze authority.
Locks that end
A lock that expires next week protects you for a week. After that, the LP tokens go back to whoever locked them.
Key point: Locks and burns answer one question: can the pool be pulled directly? The bigger question for most memecoins is who holds the supply and when they will sell.
How RugCheck reports liquidity
RugCheck lists each market (pool) a token trades in and shows what percentage of that pool's LP tokens are locked or burned, along with the dollar value. When a large share of the liquidity is unlocked, it adds a risk warning to the report.
Our grade reads that warning. If RugCheck says the liquidity is unlocked, we add 2 points. For coins outside the bonding curve, we also add 1 point when total liquidity is under $5,000, because small sells move the price a lot and you may not get out at the price you see.
| What we see | Points |
|---|---|
| RugCheck flags the liquidity as unlocked | 2 |
| Very thin liquidity, under $5,000 (graduated coins only) | 1 |
Two points alone is a C. Unlocked liquidity on its own is not proof of a planned rug. Some creators add liquidity on other exchanges without locking it for ordinary reasons. Combined with other warning signs, it adds up quickly.
How to check liquidity yourself
- Lock status: open the coin on RugCheck and look at the markets section. Note the locked percentage for each pool.
- Which pool matters: check how much liquidity is in each pool. A 100% burned pool holding most of the money is what you want to see.
- Lock end date: if the LP is locked rather than burned, find out when it unlocks.
- Liquidity trend: on DexScreener, compare liquidity now to an hour ago. A pool shrinking fast means people are selling into it.
- Liquidity against market cap: a coin with a $2 million market cap and $20,000 of liquidity can only absorb small sells before the price drops sharply.
Related
- What is a rug pull? The main types on Solana
- Can a coin that passes every check still rug?
- What is pump.fun?
- How to read a DexScreener chart