When I look at DeFi projects, the first thing I check isn't the APY, but whether there are "real people" active on GitHub. It's not about how many stars it has—that's easy to buy. Honestly, I look for continuous commits over the past few weeks, whether it's maintained by the same group of people, and if there are serious responses in the issues. Then I look at the audit reports; even a beginner can spot the key points: who conducted the audit, whether the version covered is the latest, and if issues found are marked as "fixed and re-audited." Don't just slap a logo and call it a free pass.

Upgrading multi-signature setups is also crucial. I check if the code can be changed with one click, how many people hold the keys, and whether there's a timelock (giving everyone time to react). Recently, social mining and fan tokens have become popular again. It sounds great to say "attention is mining," but when it comes to trustworthiness, you still have to go back to these boring details. Anyway, I prefer to go slow and only get in when I understand what's happening.