Recently, I saw a bunch of yield aggregators claiming APY that sounds like cheating, especially during the time when new L1/L2 incentives were launched, TVL surged, and old users were mining while complaining "mining and selling"... Basically, the money isn't coming out of nowhere; it's either subsidized by burning tokens or you're wrapping assets multiple times and depositing them into other contracts, and in the end, you can't even tell who the counterparty is.

I think we shouldn't focus on the numbers first, but on the path: which pools the funds are actually entering, whether the contracts are upgradeable, who holds the permissions, and whether you can pause/rollback if something goes wrong. No matter how high the APY is, if the contract malfunctions or the counterparty blows up, you won't even have the chance to "sell."

What I fear most isn't losing money, but losing control—losing money can still be analyzed afterward, but losing control means watching your positions get drained by the system without even knowing who to blame. Anyway, I now prefer to accept lower yields, at least on-chain it's transparent.