My costly lesson in DeFi liquidity pools

Been reflecting on a move I made late last year that really stung. I had some ETH and USDT sitting around, and saw a new, promising-looking DeFi protocol launch with some ridiculously high APYs on an ETH/USDT liquidity pool. The project seemed solid, well-audited, good team, all the usual checks. My mistake wasn't necessarily entering the pool, but the sizing of that entry. I went in too heavy, seduced by the projected returns, and ignored my own rule about staggering investments into new protocols. Impermanent loss hit harder than I anticipated when $ETH decided to take a dive, and while the APY was high, it wasn't high enough to offset the capital depreciation from both IL and the underlying asset price drop. Ended up pulling out with a pretty significant chunk gone, mostly due to the ETH slide and the IL compounding it. Should've started smaller, observed for a few weeks, and then scaled in. A simple, fundamental mistake born out of yield-chasing FOMO. Lesson learned, stick to your guns on risk sizing, especially in new, unaudited waters.