When I look at whether a project is actually doing serious work, I end up checking first to see whether the treasury expenditures and milestones line up: spending money slowly isn’t necessarily good, but spending it fast and wrapping it all in those big “operations cooperation” and “ecosystem incentives” buckets—at that point, you pretty much know what’s going on inside. Even more important is whether the milestones have verifiable, on-the-ground execution, such as a mainnet launch, upgrades, audit reports, and on-chain data you can see reflecting real usage fluctuations—rather than a pile of visions in PPT.

In the hot discussions, everyone is also bickering about validator income, MEV, and ordering fairness. Put simply, it’s about who at the settlement layer is “making the money.” If a project is truly doing work, they’ll at least explain this clearly: where the income comes from, whether there are mitigation plans, and whether there are concrete improvements to ordinary users’ slippage and overall experience. Looking back, it’s kind of funny—while the community was arguing up a storm, I quietly went to check on-chain activity and the fee structure instead, and it was much calmer. Anyway, I just keep my focus on “where the money is going + whether promises are being fulfilled.” Let the rest of the noise be noise.