I really don't have any advanced methods to judge whether a project is reliable or not; just go through these three things first: GitHub + audits + multi-signature upgrades.

GitHub isn't about how many stars it has (that can be easily faked); I prefer to see if there's continuous development recently, who is submitting issues, whether bugs are being seriously fixed—like those small pitfalls that can be "踩" (criticized) but are actually fixed properly.
If it’s been quiet for a long time, it actually makes me a bit anxious…
Don't just look at the audit report's "pass" status; I’ll check if there are high-risk issues that haven't been fixed, or if the fixes rely on some mysterious "we just changed parameters" kind of thing.
Anyway, I treat it like a health checkup, not a golden ticket to immunity.
Upgrading multi-signature is even more critical: who can sign, what the threshold is, whether there's a timelock (giving people reaction time), and whether emergency pause can also be triggered randomly with one click.
As for the macro discussion about interest rate cut expectations, the US dollar index, and risk assets rising and falling together… honestly, I often lag behind, and when I see it, it’s just “oh, they’re arguing about this again.”
I won’t pretend to understand it deeply; when real volatility hits, I still hang my stop-loss orders where others dare not, which feels pretty good.
If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just consider it tuition fees.