under the hood

What it actually does

No black box. Here's exactly what runs when you click the overlay, where every signal comes from, and how the score gets calculated.

01 · Discovery

How it finds tokens on the page at all

Network sniffing

Trading terminals like Axiom are JS-heavy single-page apps — token addresses never touch visible page text, they only ever appear in the app's own API responses. Degen Check patches fetch, XMLHttpRequest, and WebSocket the moment it's clicked, then passively scans every response the page itself receives for Solana mint addresses. This is why it works without knowing anything about Axiom's specific layout — it reads the same data the site's own frontend reads.

DOM fallback

For simpler, more static pages (like DexScreener token pages), it also scans visible page text and link hrefs directly — cheap, and catches anything the network sniffer might miss.

02 · Momentum & liquidity signals

DexScreener's public API, free, no key required

High 1h volume/liquidity ratio+15
Sustained buy pressure (>65% buys, 10+ txns)+10
Fast price move (>15% in 1h)+8
New pair already outpacing liquidity in volume+8
Very low liquidity (<$3k)−20
Extreme FDV/liquidity ratio (>200x)−12
Brand-new pool + wash-trade-shaped volume−12
Heavy sell pressure (>75% sells, 10+ txns)−15
Single thin pool (<$5k liquidity)−8
Sharp 24h drawdown (<−50%)−12

03 · Scoring & badges

Every point above adds up into one badge

No single metric can carry a token to a high score alone — it takes multiple signals agreeing (volume ratio, buy pressure, liquidity depth, pair age) to clear the higher tiers. Note on scope: this is market-data heuristics only. It does not check mint/freeze authority or LP lock status — that would need direct Solana RPC calls, and the public mainnet endpoint rate-limits/blocks aggressively under real usage, so that check was dropped rather than shipping something that silently breaks. Always verify contract-level safety yourself before trading.

CONVICTION 25+multiple strong momentum signals stacked together
WATCH 12+promising, but not a full conviction call
NEUTRALmixed or insufficient signal
RISK ≤−15meaningful red flags present
AVOID ≤−35serious red flags — thin liquidity, wash-trade pattern, or heavy dumping

04 · The group layer

Anonymous by design

First run, the overlay assigns a random callsign (like "Diamond Wolf #482") stored only in your own browser's localStorage — no accounts, no login, no personal data collected. Every token you score syncs to the shared feed under that callsign, which is what powers the leaderboard: who's finding conviction calls, ranked, without anyone needing to know who anyone actually is.