I just came across an old news piece. In that night in 2021 when the liquidation dominoes went off, someone leveraged to borrow and was only three steps away from crossing the liquidation line—should they top up to cover the position, or hold on? In the end, they watched the liquidation machine swallow the principal in one bite.

Now, when looking at new L1/L2s throwing out incentives and pulling TVL, old users are just there laughing: “Isn’t it ‘mine, then sell’? The playbook is the same.” I’ve also made my own stupid mistake—there was one time I saw a borrowing protocol parameter that looked especially attractive, wanted to go in, but after calculating for days I still couldn’t figure out exactly where the liquidation line was, so I decided, if I can’t understand it, I won’t move. The next day, that pool really did have an issue—the price simply pierced the liquidation line. A lot of people got wiped out completely. I guess I dodged a bullet.

Now when I encounter new mining projects, I first go check on-chain data and look at the history of other people getting liquidated. In fact, in many cases the structure of these new schemes hasn’t really changed—it just has a new skin.