These days, I've been looking at the TVL charts of those pledge protocols again. As soon as the numbers go up, everyone starts to get excited, basically saying "the yields can be stacked even further." But I always feel that when stacking yields, don’t also stack the illusions: security isn’t an addition problem; when things go wrong, it’s usually a chain reaction. Especially when you use one collateral to back multiple places, it looks pretty good on the surface, but if there’s a penalty or a bug, it could be a total wipeout.

Recently, retail investors have been complaining that validators’ income is being eaten up by MEV, and the fairness of transaction ordering is like Schrödinger’s… In this environment, pushing for “shared security,” I’d rather ask first: are we sharing security, or sharing risk? Anyway, I now automatically discount the yield rates, then compare that with penalty mechanisms and withdrawal speeds, so that in the end, it’s not just about making the table look good.