Yesterday, I opened the asset panel and saw that all-too-familiar scene: returns are declining.

It's not a free fall caused by a project explosion, but rather a quite "clean" correction. Funding rates have thinned out, arbitrage opportunities have become less lucrative, and even slight upticks are immediately snatched up.

Honestly, this isn't really an incident. It's the normal state when market competition is at its peak and simple opportunities are gradually disappearing.

The real question worth pondering isn't here—it's not about "how to bring APY back," but rather: **When returns are no longer the main selling point, can this system itself still stand firm?**

To put it more bluntly: if the only reason for a DeFi protocol's existence is "high yields," then once those yields vanish, it should probably fade away too. But looking at the design philosophy, some projects have done their homework in this area.

The binary split of USDf and sUSDf illustrates this well. USDf is never positioned as a "yield machine"; its functions are liquidity, being used, and building ecosystem infrastructure. sUSDf isn't promising eternal returns; it honestly states: sometimes it captures yields, and when it doesn't, it reflects that truth.

This distinction sounds simple, but the real difference lies here.

Many protocols, upon seeing yields decline, react first by mining new yields. Strategies become increasingly complex, risk margins expand outward, gradually drifting away from their original expertise. This approach might sustain for a while on the surface, but in reality, it's a gamble against market cycles—betting that they can always find new opportunities, betting that risks remain within controllable bounds.

But a more prudent approach should be to understand where your true core competitiveness lies, rather than being hostage to the illusion of "must maintain high yields."