These past two days, people have been talking about parallel processing and sharding again, and it feels like everyone’s pretty excited—like treating “faster” as a universal cure. But while I’m brewing tea and watching the order book, what I care about more is this: after you put your assets in, if something really goes wrong, can you withdraw? And when you withdraw, will you get stuck, or get caught in a squeeze? Is the exit route clear?

Social mining and fan tokens, plus that “attention is mining” idea, have also been getting a lot of buzz. The truth is, attention arrives quickly and leaves just as fast; once liquidity thins out, things get awkward fast. Anyway, when I look at a project now, I ask myself two questions: if bad news breaks, how do I get out? When I leave, will someone be there to take over? Slower is fine too—just don’t treat exiting as something you only think about at the very end.