Often the developers make their money up front - in a way that's all that has to be said for the diligence developers of these protocols might have across longer time scales.
People are so concerned with making a quick buck they forget about subtleties like developer token lock up, third party audits, patience in general. But that's how markets go - fast money is more valuable than slow money and the price you pay is risk.
What the average Joe need to know is that DeFi, while capable of producing huge gains, also comes with a lot of risk both market-wise and protocol safety-wise.
Gains have to come from somewhere. If they're not backed by something in the real world - say capital investment making some process more efficient or whatever - then the alternatives are that they're illusionary or backed by shenanigans.
Yes. Key concept. There were people in the crypto space who believed they'd invented financial perpetual motion. If you could run money through enough different transactions, you'd get a net gain without doing anything in the real world. That mostly went away when the entire crypto sector crashed. The "Line goes up" video[1] covers this mindset.
You know, to provide assurance that automated protocols are written strongly, and legal recourse against bad actors.
