Someone asked me, how do you tell if the project team is actually doing work or just "talking about doing work."

I usually don't look at how beautiful the milestones are first; I look at how the treasury money is spent:
Are the expenses stable and explainable, or are large transfers made every now and then with only "ecosystem cooperation" left?
Don't just look at the language of the milestones like a press conference; check their repositories, proposals, audit progress,
see if they align with specific deliverables, and if delays happen, whether they explain the reasons in plain language.
Recently, the community has been arguing about privacy coins, coin mixing, and compliance boundaries,
but I'm more concerned about how the project team spends money at this time:
Is it used to improve security, legal compliance, and communication, or are they using "narratives" as a shield?
To put it simply, where the money flows, that's where the heart is.
Don't treat your position as a matter of pride; the same goes for the project.