Recently, someone asked me again where the money for LST/re-staking actually comes from. Basically, there are three types: the real rewards from the underlying collateral; subsidies from protocols/projects (early-stage money distribution); and the premium you get by packaging and selling more risk. When the first two stop, the third one starts to reveal its true nature.

Don't overcomplicate the risks: the same collateral being repeatedly promised, and if there's an on-chain incident (slashing, smart contract bugs, oracle/bridge issues, liquidity drain), everything shakes. The returns look stable, but in reality, you're eating the tail risk. Seeing this, I momentarily wanted to just uninstall a few DeFi apps—anyway, watching the market doesn't really change much… but I thought about it and decided to keep them, at least the data is there, so I don't get led by stories. That kind of “inflation + studio + coin price spiral” in chain games is essentially the same: returns don't come out of nowhere, and eventually, someone can't keep up.