Mint and freeze authority — what “revoked” actually protects
4 min read
Short answer: mint authority is the power to create more supply. Freeze authority is the power to stop your account from moving tokens. Revoking both is genuinely worth doing — it removes two specific attacks. It is also the most over-weighted check in crypto, because on most launchpad tokens everyone passes it, and neither revocation stops the ways tokens actually go to zero.
Mint authority — supply inflation
Whoever holds mint authority can create new tokens at will. The attack is dilution: mint a large block, sell it into the pool, and every existing holder’s share is devalued. It doesn’t require touching liquidity or your wallet — the supply just quietly grows.
Revoked means: supply is fixed at whatever exists now. This one is a real, permanent guarantee — it cannot be undone.
Freeze authority — the sell block
Freeze authority lets the holder freeze individual token accounts. A frozen account cannot transfer, which means it cannot sell. It is the cleanest honeypot primitive on Solana: buying works normally, then selected accounts are frozen and those holders are locked in while everyone else exits.
Revoked means: nobody can freeze you out of your position. Also permanent.
Why “both revoked” is table stakes, not a green light
On the major Solana launchpads these authorities are handled by the launch protocol itself rather than left in a deployer’s hands, so essentially every token you look at will show both as revoked or protocol-controlled. A check that virtually everything passes carries almost no information — it rules out two specific attacks and tells you nothing about which of the remaining tokens is worth buying.
This is why “mint revoked ✅ freeze revoked ✅” badges feel reassuring and predict so little. They are a floor, not a verdict.
What revocation does not touch
- Concentrated supply. If a few wallets hold most of the tokens, they can dump on you. Nothing about a fixed supply prevents that — see holder concentration.
- Liquidity removal. A separate mechanism entirely — covered in liquidity locks and rug risk.
- Token-2022 extensions. A permanent delegate or transfer hook can restrict or seize tokens even with mint and freeze revoked — see Token-2022 extensions.
- The team simply selling. The most common exit of all, and completely unaffected.
- The token dying. Across the launches we track, most tokens don’t get rugged dramatically — they’re abandoned. See the base rates.
Where to spend your attention instead
Verify the authorities — it takes seconds and rules out two real attacks. Then move to the checks that actually separate one launch from another: who created it and what their previous launches did. On our data, a creator with a prior confirmed rug rugs again ~2.3× more often than baseline (measured without hindsight — see the method). That is a far more discriminating signal than a checkbox everyone passes. Start with how to check a token creator’s history.