Recently, as I look at more and more projects, I’m increasingly convinced that just reading the whitepaper and roadmap isn’t enough—you really need to track treasury spending and whether milestones are actually being delivered. In plain terms, whether the team is truly doing work comes down to where their money went—did they use it to run testnet incentive programs, hire developers, or did they end up paying for a whole bunch of KOLs to hype up points and token-forecast expectations?

A lot of people are now watching to see whether a token will be issued on the mainnet, guessing timing and odds. But I think you should first check whether they’re actually putting real money into R&D, not just feeding the community promises. The signal I care about is mainly where the funds flow—for example, whether treasury tokens are genuinely moving into the protocol, and whether there are concrete records of lockups or burns. Don’t just listen to them say, “We’re very transparent”—go check the on-chain data first; whether their payroll and audit fees are sufficient is what makes it reliable.

Anyway, I’ve gotten burned a lot, and this lesson still holds.