I spent a whole day scraping on-chain data, and it’s giving me a stomachache. “Liquidity has dried up” has been said a few hundred times—only when you truly run into it do you realize what it means to “watch the thin pancake turn hard right before your eyes.” I used to think about catching the dip, dip, dip—but now I’ve learned. First, survive. Worry about everything else later. Anyway, the biggest lesson this round is: no matter how sexy the story is, if there aren’t real users playing in it, when TVL collapses it’s as flimsy as something made of paper.

Over on the NFT side, they’re still arguing about royalties and secondary-market liquidity. To put it plainly, liquidity is already pitifully scarce—and then they add “seat fees” for creators, so trading volume can only get worse. But watching them go at each other is pretty relaxing. Anyway, I don’t really have any NFTs in my hands, so I’m just here to watch.

Talking like I’m pessimistic, but I haven’t been idle. I added a little to some protocols that are still alive. I don’t know whether that’s right or wrong—let’s just go with it for now. After this wave of water runs out, we’ll see.