Just woke up and checked the on-chain action—LST/re-staking, to put it plainly: returns aren’t something that just falls from the sky. It’s either repackaging and redistributing the staking rewards you would’ve received anyway, or someone paying to cover “the security/liquidity risks while you help carry them.” What looks like extra gains is often a blend of a risk premium plus subsidies.

The risks are pretty straightforward too: one layer is de-pegging/redemption getting stuck, and the other is re-staking using the same collateral to back more things—when something goes wrong, liquidation and penalties can stack. Once the on-chain routing gets messy, slippage and MEV show up as well… you think you’re drinking interest, but really you’re drinking volatility.

Recently people have also been talking about social mining, fan tokens, and “attention is mining.” It sounds pretty trendy, but to me it looks more like a new shell for subsidies: the amount that “attention” can mine is mostly the budget that other people are still willing to renew—if they don’t renew, it all resets to zero. Either way, when I look at the returns now, I have to ask: who’s actually paying, and why are they paying continuously? That’s it for now.