I just reviewed a project’s treasury spending proposal. The budget is burning faster than my home electricity meter, and the proposal is packed with a long list of empty words for milestones—things like “technical research” and “community building.” Honestly, whether the project team is really doing work can’t be judged by how they spend money. You have to see whether they dare to turn milestones into quantifiable, verifiable deliverables. For example, if they say “optimize transaction ordering,” can they attach real measured data showing an MEV decline? If they say “privacy compliance,” would they dare to publish the on-chain auditing logic for the mixer? Some projects burn through the treasury for half a year, but can’t even produce a decent nonce analysis report. This isn’t getting work done—it’s just doing bookkeeping.

Recently, the whole debate about privacy coins and mixer compliance has been getting heated again across various groups. Some people think anonymity is a must-have, while others complain that there’s too much “dirty money.” But actually, from an on-chain technical perspective, whether a mixer is usable is something you can tell from transaction packing efficiency—those failed transactions with non-standard nonces are wildly numerous. Basically, they’re using “compliance” as a pretext to fob people off.

In any case, when I look at projects now, I only care about two things: whether the speed at which the budget burns matches the density of milestone delivery, and whether they’re not like a renovation crew that comes in to dig a swimming pool first, then tells you it’s the foundation. To put it bluntly: on-chain, nobody can lie—only people who can’t be bothered to check.