TROUBLESHOOTING · FREE CHECKS · NO SIGNUP
Can't sell your token? Eight reasons, measured.
A sell that fails has exactly eight common causes, and each one is checkable on-chain in minutes — most of them free of malice, one of them the honeypot pattern. BlazePhoenix built the X-Ray to tell them apart by measurement instead of guesswork: work through the causes below, or scan the token first and let the instruments answer.
⚡ Scan the token first — X-Ray ›The buy worked but every sell reverts — why?
A buy that lands while every sell reverts is the honeypot pattern itself: the contract was built to let money in and never out.
No slippage setting fixes it, and no support ticket reverses it. Run the X-Ray: its behavioural test executes a simulated buy AND sell against the real contract — if the sell fails in simulation, you have your answer, measured.
Is it slippage or a blacklist? How to tell the two apart
If raising slippage a few percent makes the sell go through, it was price movement or a transfer tax; if the sell reverts at ANY slippage, your address or everyone is blocked.
Try one dust-sized sell (a few cents) at 15-20% slippage. Dust that clears means the path exists and your original trade just asked for too tight a price. Dust that reverts regardless points at a blacklist, a sell toggle, or the honeypot pattern — measure it with the X-Ray before concluding.
A transfer tax is eating the output
Fee-on-transfer tokens deduct a percentage inside the transfer itself, so the pool receives less than you sent and your minimum-output check fails.
A modest, disclosed tax only means you must allow more slippage than the tax. But a tax that rises toward 100% on sells IS a honeypot in slow motion — the X-Ray’s simulation reports the effective sell tax it observed, so you can see which one you hold.
The liquidity is gone — there is no route out
If the pool’s reserves were withdrawn ("rug pull"), no DEX can price the token and every quote returns zero.
This is measurable, not a matter of opinion: the on-chain Quoter’s exit check quotes 1 whole token into the chain’s stablecoin across every venue it knows. Zero out means zero routable liquidity — check the token’s pools yourself on the explorer; the balances are public.
Per-wallet sell limits and max-transaction clamps
Some contracts cap how much any wallet may sell per transaction or per day — sells above the cap revert while smaller ones pass.
Try a much smaller amount. If small sells clear and large ones revert, you are inside a max-tx clamp; sell in slices, and factor what the clamp says about the team’s intentions.
Trading was switched off by the owner
Contracts with an owner-only trading toggle can suspend all transfers at will — every sell reverts until the owner flips it back.
Nothing on your side is wrong, and nothing on your side can fix it. The X-Ray’s simulation catches the current state; the token’s history shows whether the toggle is a habit.
Wrong chain, wrong pair, or no gas
The mundane trio: the token lives on another chain than your wallet shows, the pair you chose has no pool, or you lack the chain’s gas token for the transaction.
Check the token’s contract address against the chain explorer, make sure you are selling into a token it actually pools with (the chain’s stable or wrapped native is the safe first try), and keep a little ETH (or the chain’s gas token) for fees.
Approval succeeded but the sell still fails
An approval is its own transaction and proves nothing about the sell path — honeypots happily let you approve forever.
Approval-then-revert is in fact the most common honeypot experience. Treat a successful approve as zero evidence; only a successful SELL — real or simulated — demonstrates the exit exists. That simulation is exactly what the X-Ray runs.
The diagnostic order
- Run the X-Ray scan. Paste the token address at blazephoenix.xyz/xray, pick the chain. The behavioural test simulates a buy and a sell against the real contract; the depth test measures routable liquidity through the on-chain Quoter. Free, no key, no wallet connection.
- Try a dust-sized sell. Attempt to sell a trivial amount (a few cents’ worth) at generous slippage. Clearing dust proves the path exists; dust reverting at any slippage points at a block, a toggle, or the honeypot pattern.
- Read the pool’s own balances. Open the pool address on the block explorer and read the reserves. Withdrawn liquidity is visible as near-zero balances — no tool required, the chain is public.
- Check the tax and limits. The X-Ray simulation reports the effective sell tax and whether transfer limits fired. A disclosed 5% tax needs bigger slippage; a 90% tax needs an exit decision.
Questions asked after it is too late
Can I recover tokens stuck in a honeypot?
Almost never, and nobody legitimate will promise otherwise. The contract itself blocks the exit, and only its owner could change that. Anyone messaging you offering "recovery services" for an upfront fee is running the follow-up scam on the same victim list — do not pay them.
Why did the buy work if the token is a scam?
Because that is the design: the honeypot needs your buy to succeed. The chart, the pool, the liquidity — all real, all bait. The only asymmetry is the exit, which is why the only honest test is attempting the exit, in simulation, before buying.
Is every failed sell a scam?
No. Slippage set too tight, a missing gas token, the wrong chain, thin liquidity and honest transfer taxes all fail sells daily with no malice involved. That is exactly why the diagnosis order matters: measure first, conclude second.
How do I check the next token before buying?
Run the X-Ray before the buy: a simulated sell that fails is the pattern itself, observed in advance. It takes seconds, costs nothing, and the check runs in your own browser against the real contract.
Go deeper
What a honeypot is › · The seven honeypot families › · Measured liquidity per token › · The daily measured record ›