This year's market has been brutal, indiscriminately killing off many well-funded projects. We once thought that having plenty of money could help us weather the cycle, but what happened? Quite the opposite—excessive funding has actually amplified the strategic errors of those projects.

Looking at the projects that have already failed, we can see they share a common flaw: they rely entirely on external infusion of funds, and once market subsidies stop, they realize they have no real reason to exist. This isn't market淘汰; it's market exposure—lifeless projects finally being exposed.

What about those that survived? Even after a severe drop (we've seen declines of 90%), they usually share a few key points:

They have real user scenarios (like Helium, Render, dYdX); fundamentally, they are infrastructure rather than just financial narratives; they either have self-sustaining cash flow or visible long-term demand; and most importantly—they can continuously deliver products and value, not just rely on incentive mechanisms and burning money to retain users.

Thinking this way, Polkadot's adjustments over the past year are easy to understand. Gavin's return and the changes since then may seem conservative, but they are actually a delayed form of rationality—shifting from dreaming outward to seeking survival inward. This might be the healthiest choice.