Lately I've been looking at a few yield aggregators again. The APY displayed on the interface looks like it's free, but honestly what you're getting isn't "yield," it's a combination of contract paths plus a bunch of counterparties stacked on top of each other. Yesterday, I casually checked the transaction history of a certain vault, and this 0x7c…b1 transaction first sent tokens into Protocol A and then routed to Pool B. Gas fees weren't high (L2s are constantly arguing about TPS/fees/subsidies these days, definitely competitive), but any hiccup along the way can't be explained just by that number on the UI.

Now I’m a bit paranoid: before checking APY, I first look at permissions, upgrade switches, and where the funds are actually being held. It’s best to also check if there have been any strange rebalances recently. The worst isn’t missing out on gains, but rather depositing money the day before a snapshot and then the protocol suddenly changing the routing… Anyway, I prefer to clearly mark the risks first.