Many applications make a fatal mistake — treating token incentives as the destination, rather than the vehicle to reach the destination. It sounds reasonable, but in reality, they are stacking popularity with subsidies and creating prosperity through spending money.

The short-term effects are explosive, with new users flocking in, and on-chain data looking shiny and impressive. But once the incentives stop or decrease, users immediately disperse — because they originally came not for the application itself, but for the subsidies.

This is similar to the logic of subsidizing ride-hailing apps with money: it appears that the market is booming, but in fact, no real value has been created. When the subsidies run out, what do you think will happen? In the long run, these projects are unlikely to escape decline.

Those that last understand one principle — incentives are just accelerators; the true fuel must be the value that the product itself can create.