There's a phenomenon that has always been quite heartbreaking: some projects seem to be looked down upon by the whole world, yet they just can't seem to get their act together.

Careful observation of the market reveals that projects with initial token circulation reaching tens of billions and inflated valuations are indeed unplayable. The routines of these projects are actually very fixed—right from day one, the project team has been continuously selling tokens. Every good news, every technical update, even every surge in community enthusiasm, hides the project team's plan to reduce their holdings. When all tokens are eventually converted into cash, the project is basically declared dead.

The trend of such projects often follows a stepwise decline. The price at which you enter doesn't really matter, because the most likely outcome is being trapped. What's even more heartbreaking is that every decent rebound is actually a new shorting opportunity. ASTER is a typical example; issues with its tokenomics design have determined its fate from the moment it launched.

This reminds us that when choosing projects, you can't just look at hype and stories; you need to scrutinize hard metrics like token distribution, the project's holding ratio, and unlock schedules. Otherwise, no matter how good the narrative, it won't save a project with fundamental problems.