Cosa può andare storto

An asset designed to track a reference value stops doing so because its backing, its redemption path, or its arbitrage loop fails under stress.

Evidenza: Establish who may redeem at par, on what schedule, with what minimum size, and what the reserve is actually invested in, then read the attestation's date and scope. On-chain, look at the depth of the primary trading pair, the collateralization ratio where…

Most fee income comes from one application, one trading pair, or one temporary activity, so the income stream is far narrower than the totals suggest.

Evidenza: Break fees down by application, by contract, and by trading pair rather than reading the chain-level or protocol-level total, and look at how concentrated gas consumption is across the top few contracts. Check whether the metric you are reading counts gross…

New units are created faster than demand to hold them grows, so each existing unit represents a smaller share of the same network.

Evidenza: The emission schedule is in code and documentation and can be checked against realized issuance on-chain, and net issuance, burn rate, and the staking ratio are standard metrics. Compare issuance against fees actually paid by users to see how much of…

Deposits and trading depth that exist only because a token subsidy pays for them, and that leave promptly when the subsidy stops or moves.

Evidenza: Compare rewards paid per unit of value locked against fees earned by that same capital, and look at what share of total value locked sits in incentivized pools versus uncompensated ones. Retention after an emissions reduction is the direct test and is visible…

An advertised yield is paid mostly in newly issued tokens rather than out of fees, so a holder can earn a rate while their network share shrinks.

Evidenza: Decompose rewards into the issuance component and the fee component, which is disclosed for most proof-of-stake networks and computable for most protocols. Real yield metrics that net issuance out of the headline rate are published by several data providers,…

A token is used as collateral to borrow against itself or a sibling asset, so a price decline forces sales that push the price down further.

Evidenza: Measure what share of a lending market's collateral is the protocol's own token or a token issued by an affiliated project, and examine treasury composition against any obligations denominated elsewhere. On-chain positions reveal recursive borrowing, since…

The payment that funds honest block production declines as issuance falls, and if fees do not replace it, the cost of attacking the chain falls with it.

Evidenza: The security budget, meaning issuance plus fees paid to producers over a period, is computable from public data, as is the share of it contributed by fees rather than subsidy. For proof-of-work chains, compare the cost of renting hash power for an hour…

Large allocations to insiders and early investors become transferable on a published schedule, adding sellable supply the tradable float has never absorbed.

Evidenza: Read the vesting contracts directly to obtain cliff dates, release curves, and beneficiary addresses, and compare circulating supply, total supply, and fully diluted valuation, which is total supply valued at the current price rather than any amount ever…