All three spot assets are falling, and the question I really want to ask is: In DeFi, who pays, and who actually gets the money in the end? Rolling 24 hours, $ETH -4.09%. Rolling 24 hours, $AAVE -8.01%. Rolling 24 hours, $UNI -7.00%. These are just their respective price changes—not protocol revenue, deposit returns, or holders’ entitlements; the fact that they’re all falling doesn’t explain one another.
Golden Finance reported at Beijing time on October 24, 2026, that X100 on Ethereum had come under attack. The attack was still ongoing when Blockaid issued its alert, and two transactions had siphoned off about 4.85 million USDT. This is a security incident involving X100, not news about Aave or Uniswap, and it cannot explain the declines in the three tokens. But it does remind me that in DeFi, beyond asking “Where does the money come from, and where does it go?”, we also need to ask what mechanisms protect the funds and governance powers.
In lending, borrowers pay interest as the cost of using funds; the return suppliers receive depends on the specific market mechanism. Whether the protocol collects fees and how those fees are distributed are separate matters. Fee revenue does not automatically mean dividends for token holders, and token incentives do not mean protocol revenue has increased. Seeing a price fall and concluding that the protocol is earning less skips the accounting—the conclusion has already jumped ahead.
The same goes for trading protocols: user fees, protocol revenue, and token utility are three different questions. Even if a mechanism uses fees for buybacks or burns, that doesn’t mean holders directly receive cash. And if it’s only a governance proposal, you certainly can’t count it in advance as revenue that has already been distributed. To determine who benefits, you need to check where the fees come from, where they go, whether the mechanism is proposed or already in effect, and what rights token holders actually have.
For ordinary users, I’m most concerned with two things: whether the money I lend can be withdrawn according to the rules, and what I get in return for the fees I pay when trading. Prices reflect market quotes, but they can’t serve as evidence for a protocol’s books; nor can the X100 incident represent all of DeFi. It’s far more reliable to distinguish stocks from flows, and fees from incentives, before discussing who truly benefits than to lump every mechanism together under the word “yield.”
Golden Finance reported at Beijing time on October 24, 2026, that X100 on Ethereum had come under attack. The attack was still ongoing when Blockaid issued its alert, and two transactions had siphoned off about 4.85 million USDT. This is a security incident involving X100, not news about Aave or Uniswap, and it cannot explain the declines in the three tokens. But it does remind me that in DeFi, beyond asking “Where does the money come from, and where does it go?”, we also need to ask what mechanisms protect the funds and governance powers.
In lending, borrowers pay interest as the cost of using funds; the return suppliers receive depends on the specific market mechanism. Whether the protocol collects fees and how those fees are distributed are separate matters. Fee revenue does not automatically mean dividends for token holders, and token incentives do not mean protocol revenue has increased. Seeing a price fall and concluding that the protocol is earning less skips the accounting—the conclusion has already jumped ahead.
The same goes for trading protocols: user fees, protocol revenue, and token utility are three different questions. Even if a mechanism uses fees for buybacks or burns, that doesn’t mean holders directly receive cash. And if it’s only a governance proposal, you certainly can’t count it in advance as revenue that has already been distributed. To determine who benefits, you need to check where the fees come from, where they go, whether the mechanism is proposed or already in effect, and what rights token holders actually have.
For ordinary users, I’m most concerned with two things: whether the money I lend can be withdrawn according to the rules, and what I get in return for the fees I pay when trading. Prices reflect market quotes, but they can’t serve as evidence for a protocol’s books; nor can the X100 incident represent all of DeFi. It’s far more reliable to distinguish stocks from flows, and fees from incentives, before discussing who truly benefits than to lump every mechanism together under the word “yield.”
