Why do deceptive tokens persist despite rising awareness? And why do rug pulls and honeypots continue to ensnare both newcomers and veterans? These are the questions that lie at the heart of contemporary crypto risk analysis.
With the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape, the rate at which new tokens are being created has surpassed the capacity of human analysis to review them manually. This has created a need for automated and AI-powered risk monitoring solutions to detect potential wrongdoing as early in the process as possible.
This article examines Anatomy of a “Snitch”: How DeepSnitch AI (DSNT) Uses 5 Specialized Agents to Front-Run Rug Pulls and Honeypots, investigating how multi-agent models of analysis can be organized to detect risk patterns before they cause actual losses.
Instead of being an advertisement for a solution, this article will discuss how such solutions function, what data they use, and their limitations, providing a thorough primer for readers interested in on-chain risk intelligence.
What Problem Are AI-Based “Snitch” Systems Trying to Solve?
Why Manual Due Diligence Falls Short
The crypto market is a 24/7 operation, with thousands of contracts being deployed every day on various chains. Manual diligence is hindered by the following limitations:
Capacity constraints for analyzing intricate smart contract logic
Tracking early liquidity activity in real-time
Lack of ability to connect developer activity across various launches
Scammers adapt to changing times, and their tactics may involve reusing patterns that are sophisticated enough to evade initial checks.
What Does “Front-Running Risk” Mean in This Context?
Front-running risk, in this context, is not related to trading manipulation. In this scenario, front-running risk is the ability to identify risk signals before the rest of the market, usually in the first few blocks after deployment. The goal is not to achieve certainty but awareness.
In some architectures, early detection may also involve monitoring activity in the mempool—the pool of pending transactions awaiting block confirmation. By analyzing deployment patterns, liquidity additions, or suspicious transaction clusters before they are finalized on-chain, risk systems can surface warnings even before a token becomes widely tradable.
Understanding the Core Threats
What Is a Rug Pull?
A rug pull typically occurs when token creators extract value after users provide liquidity or buy tokens. Common mechanisms include:
Sudden liquidity withdrawal from AMMs
Minting new tokens after launch to dilute supply
Owner-controlled functions that disable trading
What Is a Honeypot?
A honeypot allows purchases but prevents selling for most users. This can be implemented through:
Conditional transfer restrictions
Dynamic sell taxes approaching 100%
Address-based blacklists embedded in contract logic
Both tactics rely on information asymmetry, which automated analysis attempts to reduce.
Why Use Multiple Specialized Agents Instead of One Model?
Single-model risk scores often struggle to capture the full complexity of on-chain behavior. Multi-agent architectures divide analysis into focused domains, allowing each agent to detect specific categories of anomalies.
Within this framework, DeepSnitch AI (DSNT) is often described as operating through five specialized agents, each contributing a partial assessment to a broader risk picture.
The Five Specialized Agents: Functional Overview
1. Smart Contract Structure Agent
Key question: Does the contract contain hidden control mechanisms?
This agent performs static analysis at deployment, scanning for:
Owner-only functions affecting transfers or supply
Upgradeable proxies without transparency
Unusual permission hierarchies
Its role is to highlight design-level risks before trading volume increases.
2. Liquidity Behavior Agent
Key question: How stable is the token’s liquidity?
This agent monitors:
Initial liquidity size and source
Lock duration or absence of locks
Rapid liquidity removal or migration
Liquidity anomalies often precede rug pulls, making early monitoring critical.
3. Transaction Pattern Agent
Key question: Do early trades resemble known exploit patterns?
By observing early block activity, this agent looks for:
Repeated self-trades or wash trading
Bots accumulating disproportionate supply
Asymmetric buy-sell behavior
These signals help identify artificial demand or exit traps.
In more advanced implementations, this layer may also incorporate transaction simulation, where hypothetical buy and sell transactions are executed in a sandboxed environment before public interaction. Simulation can help detect honeypot logic by testing whether a token allows selling under typical user conditions. This technique reduces reliance on post-trade observation and enables earlier detection of asymmetric transfer behavior.
4. Wallet and Developer Linkage Agent
Key question: Are the creators associated with prior high-risk launches?
This agent clusters wallet behavior to detect:
Shared funding sources across multiple tokens
Reused deployer wallets
Links to previously flagged contracts
While not definitive proof of wrongdoing, historical linkage provides contextual risk.
5. Behavioral Anomaly Agent
Key question: Does the project’s behavior diverge from norms?
This agent analyzes:
Sudden parameter changes after launch
Inconsistent communication patterns
Timing correlations between announcements and on-chain actions
It focuses on behavioral irregularities rather than code alone.
How the Five Agents Work Together
Rather than issuing binary judgments, each agent contributes a signal. These signals are aggregated to form a composite risk profile, allowing users to see why a token may be flagged rather than relying on a single score.
Simplified Workflow
Contract deployed
Agents independently analyze their domains
Signals are weighted and combined
Risk indicators are surfaced in near-real time