How to Do Your Own Research (DYOR) on a Token
"Do your own research" is the most repeated and least followed advice in crypto. Here is what it actually means in practice.
Start with the boring questions
- Who built it, and are they identifiable?
- Does it do something that already exists, only worse?
- Where does the money come from? Fees, emissions, or new buyers?
If you cannot answer the third one, you do not understand the token — you are the revenue.
Read the tokenomics, not the roadmap
Roadmaps are marketing. Tokenomics are math. Find the supply schedule: how much unlocks, when, and who holds it.
A token with 80% of supply unlocking in six months has a permanent seller overhead. No amount of good news fixes that.
Check the contracts
Is liquidity locked, and for how long? Can the team mint more? Is ownership renounced or held by a multisig you can inspect?
Look at who's actually using it
Daily active addresses, real volume, fee revenue. Not followers, not Discord size, not partnership announcements.
The one-line version
If you cannot explain how the token accrues value in a sentence, without using the word "ecosystem," keep your money.