Recently, I’ve again been seeing a bunch of people talking about “modularity.” To be blunt, as a terminal user, I usually can’t really feel much: the buttons are still the same few, and wallets still pop up the authorization prompt. The only real changes might be just two things: first, fees and lag aren’t quite as outrageous; second, moving things between chains happens more often, and where your assets end up becomes more of a roll of the dice… But the smoother it gets, the more wary I get—when things are lively, the risk parameters are often overlooked.

Just now, I looked on-chain: in a certain perpetual pool, after this additional margin added to 0x7c…19b, the liquidation queue immediately stretched out the very next minute, like everyone’s leverage was squeezed onto the same side. With modularity, execution and data get split up and separated—at least for me, it’s not “technology that’s more elegantly designed.” It’s that there are more points where things can go wrong: if a bridge, a sequencer, or a DA hangs up, the experience goes haywire, and liquidations could get even more ruthless.

Also, the macro side is pretty annoying too. The moment rate-cut expectations shift, discussions about the U.S. dollar index and risk assets rising and falling together come back again… Correlation can turn on you in an instant. My approach is still the old one: whenever I see fees and open interest heating up together, I withdraw first. I’ll be cautious—so I can live longer. For now, that’s it.