To be honest, I was initially drawn to PFPs too. I thought, “Buy a membership, get into a community—pretty cool.” So what happened? Most projects died faster than I expected. I assumed buying a “status symbol” would appreciate—but it turned out that what appreciated was only the project team’s speed, along with my tuition.

Looking back, what brands can truly stand on is often not short-term hype, but something that can actually be made to work on-chain. For example, some RWA projects take U.S. Treasury bond yields on-chain and turn them into yield products. Honestly, that’s far more solid than those NFT profile-picture swaps or trading-member tier upgrades. It’s not that PFPs and memberships have no value—it’s that you need to see whether they can generate real-world cash flow, or at least whether they can protect buyers from getting harvested—so people don’t buy in and instantly get crushed to pieces.

Anyway, my principle now is: no matter how cool a project is, first check whether it can run on-chain yields. Otherwise, it’s just another “We are so back” post flooding your timeline—another one for the harvest, as soon as people buy.