What Are Suspicious Actions in Crypto and How to Research Them

What Are Suspicious Actions?

Suspicious actions in a token's contract are pieces of code that aren't typically found in a contract. Because they don't usually exist there, it's up to the investor to thoroughly DYOR and review the code to ensure the team is not hiding something or trying to be malicious. We'll talk about how to do this later in this post, but for now, let's cover whether suspicious actions are "good or bad."

Calling out a piece of code as suspicious does not indicate that the code is good or bad.

For example, think of suspicious actions as if you are driving home from the store and notice a car making the same turns. You may be suspicious that the person may have bad intentions, but it could also be the neighbor two blocks down, and they just happened to leave the store at the same time as you. As your "research," you may circle the block to see if the car continues following you.

The same is for suspicious actions in a token's contract - you have to do some digging to determine if there's a legitimate reason for that code to be there or if the code can be used against you, the investor.

What Is An Example of a Suspicious Code?

Lately, we have seen a piece of code in contracts that perform a minimum function. The code takes two numbers and returns the lower of the two numbers to be used elsewhere in the contract.

Is this good or bad?

That depends on how the minimum code is being used in the contract. It could be determining the smaller of two tax fees to charge you, which would be good. Or the minimum code could be used to limit the amount of tokens you can sell in a single transaction which would be bad - and make it similar to a honeypot.

As you can see, understanding how the code is being used in the contract is critical to understanding if the code is labeled "good or bad."

How Do I Research a Contract's Suspicious Actions?

We've stated how important it is to DYOR when looking into suspicious actions, but how?

Investors can scan a contract with the Quick Intel's AI scanner - a tool that will call out suspicious activities and then display that code to you.

Additionally, Quick Intel can explain what the code is doing within the contract so you can easily understand. This information allows you to perform additional research, such as asking the project team the purpose behind the code so you can stay safe.