Deployer Reputation Explained: Why Token Checks Miss Serial Ruggers
When you find a new Solana token on DexScreener or Birdeye, what do you check first? Most traders look at the token — its liquidity, volume, holder count, price chart, and maybe whether it's been flagged by RugCheck. But there's a far more predictive signal hiding in plain sight: the deployer's track record.
Every token on Solana was created by a specific wallet address. That wallet's entire history is permanently recorded on-chain. And when you look at that history — how many tokens they've created, how many survived, how they were funded, who else shares their funding source — patterns emerge that are invisible at the token level.
This is deployer reputation, and it's the foundation of how DaybreakScan evaluates token safety.
The Problem With Token-Level Analysis
Traditional rug pull detection tools analyze individual tokens. They check whether mint authority is revoked, whether freeze authority is active, what the top holder concentration looks like, and whether the contract has suspicious functions. These are useful checks, and you should absolutely run them.
But here's the fundamental problem: a serial rugger's 200th token looks identical to a legitimate project at the contract level.
On Solana — especially with Pump.fun tokens — virtually every token uses the same standard token program. There's no custom smart contract to audit. The contract code is identical across millions of tokens. The attack vector isn't the code. It's the deployer.
A deployer we identified during testing had created 194 tokens. Of those, 157 were dead — zero liquidity, zero trading activity. That's an 80.9% death rate. They scored 8 out of 100 on Daybreak's reputation scale and were classified as a SERIAL_RUGGER.
Yet each individual token they launched would have passed a standard rug check. Mint authority? Revoked. Freeze authority? Revoked. Liquidity? Present at launch. The contract was clean. The deployer was not.
What Deployer History Reveals
When Daybreak scans a deployer wallet, it extracts five core metrics from their on-chain history:
Total tokens created — How many tokens this wallet has deployed. A wallet that has created 3 tokens is fundamentally different from one that has created 150. High volume deployment is a hallmark of serial rug operations.
Dead tokens — How many of the deployer's tokens have no remaining liquidity. A "dead" token is one where the Raydium or Pump.fun liquidity pool has been drained or the token never graduated from the bonding curve at all.
Death rate — Dead tokens divided by total tokens. This is the single most predictive metric in our scoring system, weighted at 40% of the total score. A death rate above 50% is concerning. Above 80% is near-certain evidence of a serial rug pattern.
Deploy velocity — How many tokens the deployer creates per day on average. Legitimate project founders create tokens occasionally — maybe one every few weeks or months. Serial ruggers operate on volume, sometimes deploying 5, 10, or 20 tokens daily. Each token is a low-effort lottery ticket: hype it briefly, sell if it gets traction, abandon it if it doesn't.
Activity timeline — When the deployer was first active and when they most recently deployed. A wallet that has been deploying tokens steadily for months with a high death rate tells a different story than a new wallet with one or two tokens.
How the Scoring Works
Daybreak's reputation score is a 0-100 composite built from four weighted components:
| Component | Weight | What It Measures |
|---|---|---|
| Death rate | 40% | Percentage of the deployer's tokens that are dead |
| Token count | 20% | Penalty for high-volume deployers (more than 10 tokens) |
| Average lifespan | 20% | How long the deployer's tokens typically survive |
| Cluster size | 20% | Number of connected deployers sharing the same funder |
On top of the base score, the system applies targeted penalties for specific red flags detected on the token being scanned:
| Penalty | Points | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Active mint authority | -10 | Deployer can create unlimited new tokens |
| Active freeze authority | -5 | Deployer can freeze holder wallets |
| Deployer holdings >50% | -10 | Deployer still holds majority of supply |
| Deployer holdings >30% | -5 | Deployer holds significant supply |
| Deploy velocity >5/day | -10 | Carpet-bombing token creation |
| Deploy velocity >2/day | -5 | Elevated creation rate |
| Bundle detected | -5 | Deployer bought tokens in the same block as creation |
| Top holder >80% | -5 | Single wallet controls most of supply |
| Top holder >60% | -3 | Significant concentration risk |
The final score maps to one of three verdicts:
- CLEAN (70-100) — Low death rate, reasonable token count, no cluster connections. The deployer has a demonstrated track record of creating tokens that retain value.
- SUSPICIOUS (30-70) — Elevated death rate or concerning patterns. The deployer may be legitimate but has warning signs. Proceed with caution and lean on token-level checks.
- SERIAL_RUGGER (0-30) — High death rate, typically high volume, frequently connected to cluster networks. Strong evidence of systematic rug behavior across multiple tokens.
Funding Cluster Analysis
One of the most powerful features in deployer reputation is cluster analysis — the ability to detect when seemingly independent deployers are actually controlled by the same entity.
Here's the pattern we see repeatedly:
- A central funder wallet holds SOL
- The funder sends small amounts (0.1-1 SOL) to multiple fresh wallets
- Each fresh wallet deploys tokens on Pump.fun
- When a wallet's death rate gets too high and tools start flagging it, they abandon it and fund a new one
- The cycle repeats
Each deployer wallet in this cluster looks independent. Different wallet addresses, different token names, different social media accounts. But follow the money backward to the funding source, and the connection becomes clear.
Daybreak's cluster analysis works in three steps:
- Find the funding source — Trace the deployer's earliest incoming SOL transfer to identify who funded them.
- Scan the funder's outgoing transfers — Check all wallets that received SOL (above 0.01 SOL) from the same funder.
- Check recipients for Pump.fun activity — If the funder has also bankrolled other Pump.fun deployers, and those deployers have high death rates, you're looking at a coordinated rug network.
In our testing, we've identified deployers connected to 12 other deployers through shared funding — a full rug network operating across dozens of wallets and hundreds of tokens. From the perspective of any single token, this network is invisible.
Why This Matters Now
The scale of the problem is enormous. The Solidus Labs report on Solana found that 98.6% of Pump.fun tokens are scams. Over 40% of new launches come from wallets with a history of rug pulls. And on Raydium, 93% of the 361,000 liquidity pools exhibit "soft rug pull characteristics."
These aren't edge cases. Rug pulls are the default outcome for Solana tokens. The question isn't whether scams exist — it's whether you have the tools to filter them out before you trade.
Token-level analysis helps, but it's not enough on its own. A token can pass every contract check and still be a rug if the deployer behind it has a history of serial rugging. Deployer reputation fills that gap.
Deployer Reputation vs. Other Tools
Here's how deployer reputation analysis compares to existing rug detection approaches:
| Aspect | Contract Checkers (RugCheck, SolSniffer) | Deployer Reputation (Daybreak) |
|---|---|---|
| What it checks | Token contract, authorities, liquidity | Deployer behavior, history, funding |
| Time scope | Current token snapshot | Deployer's full lifetime history |
| Network scope | Single token | Cross-token, cross-wallet clusters |
| Detects serial ruggers | No — each token passes independently | Yes — patterns across 100+ tokens |
| Detects cluster networks | No | Yes — funding source tracing |
| Best for | Honeypot detection, authority checks | Behavioral intent, repeat offenders |
The two approaches are complementary, not competitive. Check the token with RugCheck. Check the deployer with DaybreakScan. Use both signals together.
Check any deployer's reputation now — Paste a token address or wallet into DaybreakScan to see their full rug history, death rate, and cluster connections. 3 free scans per day.
Getting Started
To check a deployer's reputation:
- Copy any Solana token's contract address
- Go to DaybreakScan
- Paste the address and connect your wallet
- Review the deployer's score, death rate, cluster connections, and token risks
The scan takes seconds and surfaces information that would take hours to piece together manually from raw blockchain data. Three scans per day are free — enough to check the tokens you're actually considering trading.
The traders who consistently avoid rug pulls aren't lucky. They're checking the deployer before they check the chart.