Midnight perpetual funding rate scrolling until my eyes are dry, and then I see a bunch of people talking about LST / re-staking. Honestly, the returns aren’t falling from the sky: on one side, it’s the staking itself with a bit of consensus rewards; on the other side, it’s more like “selling the same security again” to collect transaction fees/subsidies. When the subsidies run out, it deflates—if the transaction fees aren’t enough, then you’ve got to rely on narratives to keep it alive… I can’t help but feel a little uneasy watching it.

The risks are also pretty straightforward: if the underlying staking has any issues (penalties, nodes acting up), and then you stack an additional layer of re-staking contracts/middlemen on top, it’s like adding a whole string of places where things can go wrong. And not to mention, when liquidity tightens, LSTs trade at a discount, and chain-reaction liquidations follow— the liquidation heatmap practically draws you a “heartbeat” line.

Recently, AI Agent automatic on-chain interactions have been pretty hot too. Some people hype that it can automatically do arbitrage and automatically reinvest. The result is that the contract permissions are opened like the doors are wide open… Anyway, whenever I see “automatically help you earn,” I’ll ask one thing first: if something goes wrong, who’s on the hook? I’m going to get to work now.