I'm now judging whether a project is serious or not, and the first thing I look at isn't how beautiful the roadmap is, but rather the treasury expenditures: where the money is spent and whether the spending is coherent. For example, claiming to push towards milestones while the treasury continuously pays out to "advisors/market/BD," and development-related work is instead sporadic... Honestly, it feels more like they're prolonging life rather than actually doing work. Conversely, if the spending pace aligns with delivery milestones (even if it's slower), I would give it a higher score internally.

Recently, with extreme funding rates, whether the group is arguing about a reversal or continuing to squeeze the bubble, I also take the opportunity to compare: is the project team working overtime to deliver, or are they busy issuing announcements to stabilize sentiment? When money and time are spent on "preventing you from leaving," I become a bit cautious.

I trust data a little more because intuition can easily be misled by "storytelling + market noise," but on-chain flows at least won't perform for me... Of course, Gas fees still teach me a lesson, so I'll leave it at that for now.