Its difficult to avoid really organized rugpulls. I honestly learned solidity and made my own tokens and it gave me a good ability to know what to avoid.

Its always good to buy/sell a tiny amount first just to make sure you actually come out with about the same amount at the end. They can tweak the contract to add huge taxes on each transaction and not mention it.

Its also good to look at the top holders and make sure the white paper explains why one account has 30% or whatever.

Investing in small unknown projects is very dangerous. Scams are everywhere. I think it’s almost inevitable that everyone will lose something to a scam. Its important to gauge risk and start with a tiny investment if you’re not sure about something.

Sometimes I’ll buy like $10-20 worth of something just so I’m mentally invested. Then I join their discord and talk to people for a bit and watch the price charts for the project. So far I’ve come out way ahead by being very careful like this. But I have friends who have made stupid money by aping into random things that have hype.