Story Highlights
- Presale Risks: Many newcomers fall for scam coins during presales, risking funds by sending them to addresses or connecting wallets to Dapps.
- Wallet Security: Regularly check and revoke old smart contract approvals to protect your wallet.
- Revocation Tools: Tools like revoke.cash for Ethereum, unrekt for Binance Smart Chain, and the Famous Foxes Foundation’s revoker for Solana can help manage and revoke smart contract approvals to protect your investments.
Amid the whole hype around meme coins, it seems that many newcomers have fallen for scam coins. In order to participate in presales Investors mainly have to send funds to a certain blockchain address (1) or connect their wallet to a Dapp (decentralised application) and allow the Dapp provider to spend a certain amount/number of tokens (2). Certainly there are more ways to enter a presale but these are the two common ones that I came accross.
The safer one in general might be the first one where you just send a certain amount of tokens/funds to a wallet address and hope that its not a scam and you will get the presale-token send to your wallet in return. It is safer cause you do not interact with Dapps and therefore can not compromise your wallet. You are only risking the presale invest.
Regularly check your wallet and revoke old approvals
Interacting with a (crooked) Dapp however does not only put your investment at risk but also jeopardizes your wallet cause you grant the Dapp provider permission to interact with your wallet. In general connecting your Web3 wallet (MetaMask, Brave Wallet, TrustWallet, etc.) to reputable Dapp-providers like UniSwap, PancakeSwap or OpenSea isnt a threat to your wallet. So for crypto veterans this isnt really a problem. They know how to check projects/sites and what to look for. Unfortunatley everyone has to start somewhere and with every bullrun there are new investors that can be mislead easy.
In general, it makes sense to regularly check your wallet and especially revoke older approvals of smart contracts. And thats how you gonna do it/these are your options:
Etherum network (ERC20)
revoke.cash is a good tool to use if you are doing transactions on the Etherum network. You can inspect and revoke your approvals. The site has a very good FAQ and is also listing the latest crypto hacks and exploits. Finally they have a very active X (former Twitter) and Discord. You can get a better grip on the tool by asking questions in their communities.
Binance Smart Chain (BEP20)
For those on the Binance Smart Chain, there’s also a similar program called unrekt. They do the same as revoke.cash on ERC20 but they have a smaller active community on X and Telegram.
Solana network (SOL)
Due to the current meme coin hype on Solana I highly advice everyone that has participated in one or more of those hundreds of presales to check your contracts on Solana. The Famous Foxes Foundation has a contract revoker on their site. Like revoke.cash they run very active communities/followers on X and Discord.
These list and sites are only recommendations that i myself found useful in order to revoke token approvals. There are certainly alternatives. If you type in “metamask/trustwallet/phantomwallet how to revoke smart contract allowances/token approvals” on a search engine, you will find some valuable information and tips.
And as always: do your own research, don’t just blindly contect your wallet to Dapps on on the web.