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Sadly it's not a yes or no question.
With stargate your APY finally is in the decent zone and everyone should consider locking it up but there are also drawbacks and exchanges MAY offer better overall APY.

One of the drawbacks is the limited amount of stargate NFT you can mint.
(tl;dr, If you want to stake VET, you have to mint an NFT and pick a validator to earn VTHO. These NFT's are limited and as far as I know all the 15million and 5million VET NFT's are gone. Since the new staking, your NFT also holds the VET. Which means you have to extra careful if you decide to sell it or transfer it to others. What I mean by this, if you were to have a 5million NFT and you sell it for 3mill. You just lost 2million. With the new staking system, your stargate NFT is the proof that you own that VET. Whoever has the proof, got the VET.)
I'm not sure how many NFT left for the big boy tier 1mill+ but a lot of 10k, 50k VET NFT are up for grab.
I assume the idea here was to allow people a lower barrier of entry with staking 10k VET \~$700 currently) which allows them to do pretty much anything, which is useful if you participate in the DAO.
If you type vechain stargate docs, you will find the official documentation which explains everything nicely and then you can use vechainstats VTHO calculator(tools/VET staking) to check if it's worth it for you or not.
For the calculation, all you need to pick is the node tier and then just calculate.

ignoring the SUSHI token (its own bleeding mess), the protocol architecture has shifted in a way nobody talks about because the chart looks awful.
old Sushi: Uniswap fork with a token. new Sushi: routing layer + stack of specialized DEX products.
the pieces:
RP7 (May 2025), aggregation engine. added Maverick V2 + Fluid. competes with 1inch, not just Uniswap.
SushiXSwap, cross-chain swap. $20B+ cumulative volume in 2025. real product-market fit, almost no one talks about it.
Susa (April 2 2026), on-chain order book perps on Layer N. same bet Hyperliquid won.
Blade, LVR AMM for blue-chip pairs. addresses what we used to mislabel as IL.
Wara + Jupiter integration (Feb 2026) , Solana presence. Jupiter handles routing, Sushi handles UX.
every piece is a venture-scale bet of its own.
bear case on the architecture:
multi-product DeFi strategies usually fail. dYdX tried it, ended up just being perps.
aggregator pricing power requires distribution. 1inch + Matcha already exist.
Sushi Labs / DAO split = unresolved governance debt. the 99.9% emissions vote was the symptom.
$50M slippage incident in March 2026 = chain breadth without liquidity depth.
bull case:
$20B+ SushiXSwap volume is the loudest signal. cross-chain swap is a real UX problem and they're solving it.
Susa's bet (on-chain order book on a fast L2) has a clear precedent that worked.
vertically integrated DEX platforms haven't been tried at this scale.
token aside, the architecture is a real case study
anyone actually used Susa since the April 2 launch? curious about order book depth + fill quality. and is RP7 competitive vs 1inch on real routing, or mostly internal Sushi pool routing dressed up?

My coment was deleted because didnt maintain constructive discussion.
So here it is again, better formulated.
I have been in cardano for years now, since $0.07, cardano had its run.
But holding cardano at this point will get you nowhere.
The worst thing that happened to cardano was governance and catalys funding.
They missed the mark by huge margin by focusing on governance instead of improve the chain.
It got run over by other chains in term of development. Yes it is slowly catching up.
But governance led to catalyst funding being exploited by grifters and leeches.
"Building" on cardano only if funded by catalyst. The catalyst treasury has been drained even by iog and cardano fundation.
There has been a massive sell pressure on the ADA token.
Even now with ada price of 0.25 there are millions of ada requested from catalyst, only to be sold for fiat to fund expenses from different "projects" and even cardano organizations.
If they are not bullish on ada and are willing to sell it for usd at these ridicules prices, how are we going to be bullish on ada.
If you want to actually grow your portfolio take a look at $strike token on cardano.
Use your ada and buy $strike.
This is a real utility token from Strike Finance , they build a perpetual trading platform with 100% revenue share.
All fees, that is 100% of all possible fees go to stakers of the token. Everything goes to stakers.
The team itself and the platform stake their tokens, and DAO tokens just like everybody else.
Everyone is the same boat.
If they want to earn they need to make their platform successful, and by doing that, they make us all earn.
They already have the platform up and running, currently they are working on security, as a requirement to onboard institutional capital to flow into their liquidity vaults, that already have over 20% apr, and also currently they are running a campaign for 3months to reimburse all losses to liquidity providers if by chance they happen.
Liquid staking is about to go live in a week, their mobile app is ready but waiting for approval from apple to release both android and apple app at the same time.
The trading fees are low, opening and closing trades is instant, like on a cex.
They are running their own node on top of the cardano, they will decentralize it more in coming months.
Also this make it possible to access strike trading platform from different chains.
Later they will offer people to run validator node themself. At later stages they will run its own blockchain.
All this said, this is a project that is just starting its run, with only 2500holders and $12M MC.
So what do you thing will grow your bags more, investing in ada and holding it.
Or using that ada to participate in cardano defi, and buy $STRIKE.
What has more upside potential? ADA or $STRIKE?

The lack of on-chain verification is exactly why we are seeing these failures. While LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino deflects, Kelp DAO is the one actually showing an ethical response by sacrificing 70% of their treasury to fix the mess. Real security requires skin in the game, not just gaslighting and what-ifs.

There’s been a noticeable cluster of DeFi exploits recently, with multiple protocols affected over a short period. Numbers below are approximate and based on publicly reported incidents worth verifying individually.

**Recent incidents**
* Kelp DAO: \~$292M
* Drift: \~$285M
* Grinex: \~$13.7M
* Rhea Finance: \~$7.6M
* Wasabi: \~$5M
* Volo: \~$3.5M
* Purrlend: \~$1.5M
* CoW Swap: \~$1.2M
* Aethir: \~$423K
* Silo: \~$392K
* Scallop: \~150K SUI
One reported cause in a recent case (Wasabi) was a compromised deployer EOA, which highlights how off-chain key management can still be a major vulnerability even when smart contracts are audited.
**Estimated total impact**
\~$800M+ in reported losses over a relatively short timeframe
Security continues to be one of the biggest challenges in DeFi, especially around:
* Key management (EOAs, multisigs)
* Smart contract vulnerabilities
* Bridge and cross-chain risks
If anyone has confirmed sources or corrections for specific incidents, would be useful to refine this list further.