I often see a pretty funny phenomenon in crypto: everyone talks about PMF, revenue, and retention as the most important things, but in reality? Whenever there's a new trend, you see ten projects rushing to get listed, even when they don't have an operational product yet.

Don't misunderstand, unlock schedules and tokenomics all play a role; it's just that when the main goal is "making money immediately" instead of "building something valuable," you can sense it from miles away.

I notice that true builders still keep their heads down working even when the market is bad: improving technology, expanding integrations, finding ways to retain users long-term. And what stands out most in a tough market? It's the projects that find a balance between product-market fit, a reasonable revenue stream, and sound tokenomics.

The rest? Just repeating the same script with a different ticker — I hope you don't realize it's a copy of something, or worse, being "hired" into a project to shill. This is really exhausting, but on the other hand, it also makes genuine builders easier to spot. When you understand what kite means in a project's strategy — that is, small steps to test the market — you'll see the difference between those just testing the market and those truly committed.