Lately, I keep seeing everyone using ETF capital flows and the risk appetite in the US stock market to directly explain crypto price movements... It sounds reasonable, but I care more about whether the project itself is reliable, and not just blindly trusting when the market heats up.

When a newbie looks at GitHub, I usually think of it as a "transparent kitchen window": even if you don't know how to cook, you can see if someone is consistently cleaning the countertops. Are the commits ongoing, are there signs of last-minute rush jobs, are there bug reports in the issues, and are they being responded to? At least that can weed out projects that are just sitting there gathering dust.

Don’t treat audit reports as a talisman; I first look at a few pages beyond the conclusion: whether the scope is clearly written (what was audited and what wasn’t), whether high-risk issues have been fixed, and if the fixes have been double-checked. Upgrading to multi-signature is like not hanging all the house keys on one person's belt: the number of signers, the threshold, whether there's a time lock (giving you reaction time)—these are much more meaningful than just saying "we use multi-signature for security." Anyway, before I buy anything now, I brew a cup of tea and quickly scan these aspects—anything that can help me avoid pitfalls.