How to verify someone else's lock
A screenshot of a lock is worth nothing. Four checks, a few minutes, and you will know whether a claim about locked tokens is real and what it actually covers.
1. Start from the chain, not from their link
A link a team sends you can point anywhere, including a page they control. Take the token contract address and look it up yourself. On Lockbox, paste the address into the explorer and you will see every lock, vesting schedule and vault for that token, along with how much of the supply is held and how much has been burned. No wallet is needed to look.
2. Check the amount against total supply
This is where most claims fall apart. A team announcing locked tokens rarely says what share that is. A hundred million tokens sounds enormous and may be 0.4% of supply. The percentage is the number that means something, and it is the first thing shown on a Lockbox token page.
For liquidity specifically, the question is what share of the pool is locked, not what share of the token. A pool with 5% of its liquidity locked can still be drained.
3. Read the date, and who receives it
Two things to look at. When does it unlock, and who gets the tokens when it does? A lock expiring next week is not much of a commitment. A lock releasing to an address that is not the team's is worth asking about.
If it is a transferable vault, the holder can change at any time, because the position can be sold. The page shows the current holder, but that is a fact about right now rather than a promise about later.
Where a contract lets a lock be extended, a date can also go stale. The entry written when the lock was created says one thing and the wallet holding the tokens enforces another, and it is the wallet that decides. Read the date off the wallet itself. On Lockbox the proof page already does this, and says so when a lock has been pushed further out.
4. Check the contract can do what it claims
Open the locking contract on the block explorer and confirm its source is verified, which means the code shown is provably the code that runs. Then look for the things that would undermine the lock:
- An owner or admin role, and whether it can move or release funds.
- A pause or emergency withdraw function.
- An upgrade path, which lets today's code be replaced by tomorrow's.
- Whether the fee, or anything else, can be changed after the fact.
Then check the tokens are really where the record says. Read the balance of the vesting wallet directly on the explorer and confirm it matches. A record is only as good as the balance behind it.
What none of this tells you
A verified lock proves those particular tokens are held on that schedule. It says nothing about the rest of the supply, the token contract, or the people. Check whether the token can mint, whether transfers can be taxed or blocked, and how much of the supply sits in wallets that are not locked at all. What a lock proves, and what it does not.