Recently, everyone has been talking about parallelism and sharding again, and it feels like they’ve widened the highway by a few more lanes—cars can run faster, but what I care about more is where the guardrails are, and whether the exit signage is clear. Plainly put: no matter how advanced the chain is, once your assets get stuck on a bridge, you can’t even get off.

The collateralization/sharing security setup that people criticize as a “nested doll” isn’t unfair: the yield stacks up layer by layer, and so do the permissions and the risks. Who can move your assets under what conditions, whether you can withdraw in time, and whether you’ll be hit with collective punishment—penalties or confiscation—when you withdraw. Those are the “manuals” I’d look through first. Anyway, when I look at projects now, I ask about the exit path first, then I examine the security assumptions. It’s exciting and lively, but don’t end up finding out at the end that you’ve lent your keys to strangers.