Recently, I saw a bunch of people talking about LSTs and re-staking again, and honestly, the returns aren’t just falling from the sky: either someone pays you a safety fee/service fee, or they bundle the risk into "seemingly stable" numbers. The on-chain system is quite honest—money comes from where it goes.

The risks are also quite straightforward: the underlying staking system already has the possibility of penalties, confiscation, or node failures; stacking another layer of staking on top is like using the same collateral to back multiple times, and one accident could trigger a chain reaction… When that happens, who will cover the losses? It might just be left with the phrase "protocol governance."

Recently, retail investors have been complaining about validator income, MEV, and fairness in transaction ordering, and I can understand: you think you're earning yields, but you're actually helping others bear the friction costs of the system. Anyway, what I care more about now is: are these returns "someone really pays," or just "someone's accounting first"? I still believe that on-chain will reveal human nature more clearly.