So many projects throw around "alignment" like it's the magic word that solves everything. Investors want alignment. Communities demand alignment. Projects promise alignment. But let's be real—it's become more of a talking point than an actual mechanism. The incentive structures are still misaligned in most cases; people just got really good at using the term. When a token holder's long-term interest actually conflicts with the protocol's design, all the alignment rhetoric in the world won't fix that fundamental problem.