I usually don’t pay much attention to what project teams shout out every day about milestones. Instead, I’ll look into treasury expenditures: where the money goes, whether the pace is steady, and whether they’ve been “making up lessons” in the same direction for a long time. In plain terms, teams that are truly doing work will have expenses that are a bit “boring”—things that keep showing up again and again, like audits, security, infrastructure, and developer support. Conversely, what’s really jarring is when activity budgets suddenly spike, there’s a long list of partnership headlines, but no output to be seen.

Not long ago, when funding rates were at an extreme, the chat was in an uproar: should it be a reversal, or should they keep squeezing more bubble? At the time, I read a project’s milestones, and they sounded very exciting, but those big outgoing transfers from the treasury didn’t have a clear explanation—so I just chose to pretend I didn’t understand and do nothing… Later, sure enough, it turned into another emotional rollercoaster. It’s not that there must be something wrong; it’s just that in situations like this, I’d rather miss out—at least I can sleep more soundly.