Rug pull

A rug pull, literally pulling the rug out from under someone, is when the creator or people linked to them suddenly take the value out of a token. The classic version is a liquidity withdrawal: a creator who kept the LP tokens pulls the SOL or ETH out of the pool and holders are left with a token nobody can buy from them.

In the launchpad era, where liquidity is often burned automatically, rugs by selling are more common. The creator buys a large share of supply at launch, often from many wallets, waits for buyers and sells everything at once. There is also the soft rug: a slow abandonment of the project with gradual selling. A token this happens to is said to have been rugged.