I’ve started restaking LSTs again recently, and I’m still complaining out loud, “TVL is getting inflated again,” but my hands are honest—I still clicked in anyway… To put it simply, I’m itching to do it because when I see “one more layer of yield,” my brain automatically imagines me picking up money off the ground, even though I know it might be leaking out of someone else’s wallet.

Where does the yield come from? Part of it is the normal interest from the underlying staking, and the rest is mostly protocol subsidies, points/airdrop expectations, and repackaging the risk to sell to the people who come later. The risk is also pretty straightforward: once the smart contract has an issue, it’s wiped out in one go. You may not always understand on-chain validators or the punishment mechanisms, and the more layers of restaking you pile on, the slower you are to get out when something goes wrong.

Recently, with the kind of attention rotation driven by memes and celebrity trading calls, I’m even more scared… The old player’s line, “Don’t take the last baton,” isn’t just acting grown-up—it’s because they’ve been burned before. Anyway, I’ll just test with a small amount; don’t take “earning more” for granted.