Have you seen the most outrageous thing? On a certain top DeFi lending protocol, borrowing money surprisingly doesn’t require paying interest, and you can even make money. This sounds like a scam trick, but at a certain stage, it’s actually happening.

How is this possible? The secret lies in token incentives. When the emission value of the protocol’s governance tokens exceeds the borrowing interest rate, lending stablecoins becomes a form of "mining." The logic of funding costs is completely reversed — your liabilities turn into a tool for making money. This gameplay can indeed quickly boost TVL (Total Value Locked), and the data looks very attractive, but the question is.

Can this subsidy last forever? Obviously not. Token incentives will eventually run out or the token price will plummet, and at that point, the real funding costs will be exposed immediately. Today’s "free lunch," in simple terms, is the protocol trading future governance rights for current liquidity — a deal that discounts future equity to buy current hype.

So the question is clear: this isn’t some innovative financial product design, but a time-limited incentive game. Participants need to clearly understand that the opening and closing of this "negative interest rate window" is essentially the protocol manipulating market sentiment. Once incentives decline or market sentiment reverses, those previously seemingly profitable arbitrage opportunities could turn into loss traps.

In DeFi, always ask one question: where does this profit come from? If the answer is "from future token emissions," then you need to figure out exactly how far into the future that is.