Lately, I’ve been looking again at LSTs and the whole re-staking setup. To put it plainly, there are only two parts to the yield: one is the blockchain’s own inflation/fees, and the other is that someone is willing to pay for “shared security” (whether it’s protocol subsidies or the project team paying out of its own pocket). The former is at least somewhat computable, but the latter feels much more driven by emotion and budget—when things are hot, everyone thinks it’s reasonable; when things cool off, it’s easy to get scolded for “daisy-chaining” (like a nested structure).

The risks are also very direct: staked assets already come with penalties and an unbonding period. Adding another layer is essentially stacking liquidity constraints and responsibility even higher. If there’s a smart contract bug, an operator mistake, or even a rule change, you may not have time to exit according to the schedule. What I regret isn’t the outcome—it’s that at the time, to chase that extra bit of yield, I wrote the exit conditions too “optimistically.”

Anyway, now whenever I see yield stacking, I ask one question first: who is actually paying for this money? And if that money stops coming, what would be left? If you can’t answer clearly, then don’t proceed. That’s it.