Solana mint and freeze authorities explained
Understand what token authorities permit, what revocation changes, and why a revoked authority does not make a token safe.
RugSignal editorial notes · Published 16 October 2026 · Source-based, not investment advice.
Two different permissions
Mint authority is permission to create more units of a token. Freeze authority is permission to freeze token accounts. They are different roles; checking one is not checking both. A report should identify the mint it examined and whether each permission is active, revoked or unknown. The account holding an authority is not necessarily the account that originally created the token.
What revocation establishes
Setting a selected authority to None permanently removes that specific role. This is useful evidence about a capability, not a certificate about the project. It does not establish fair distribution, sufficient liquidity or honest future behavior. A scanner should distinguish a verified absence from a failed provider lookup: neither a timeout nor a missing field proves revocation.
Check extensions as well
Token-2022 supports additional extensions with their own behavior and permissions. Transfer fees can change what a recipient receives. Review the applicable configuration and authority rather than assuming all SPL tokens behave identically. RugSignal flags configured fee thresholds using its published deterministic method; those thresholds express the product's warning policy, not a universal definition of fraud.
Use the finding in context
An authority can be a legitimate operational feature in some tokens and an unacceptable exposure for your own use case. Inspect why it exists, who controls it, and whether that control matches the project's disclosures. Compare the permission findings with ownership concentration and liquidity evidence. Never sign a transaction to perform a public scan: RugSignal's basic checks need only a mint address. Wallet sign-in, when used for private features, signs a message and grants no transfer approval.
Sources and further reading
- Solana: tokens and authority roles
- Solana: setting or revoking authority
- Solana: transfer-fee extension
Official protocol documentation explains capabilities; it does not certify an individual token. RugSignal-specific statements describe our current implementation.