Recently, everyone’s been chatting about LSTs and re-staking, and everyone’s saying “make money while lying back,” so I kind of want to splash some cold water: earnings, put simply, don’t fall from the sky. Most of it comes from inflation rewards + people being willing to pay for security/liquidity, and then an additional layer of protocols packages the risks and redistributes them. When off-chain funds move onto the chain, it’s definitely lively—but lively doesn’t mean stable. Re-staking essentially makes “multiple promises” with the same collateral; once something goes wrong at the base layer (penalties and confiscations, oracle glitches, contract vulnerabilities, liquidity squeezes), the chain reaction can be faster than everyone expects. Lately, some people have also been using ETF fund flows and US stock market risk appetite to explain crypto market ups and downs, and I hear that and—well—macro can affect sentiment, but don’t use it as a cover-up. My roommate even asked me, “Doesn’t adding no leverage count as being conservative?” I can only say: just stay alive first.