A decentralized ecosystem can capture value and still fail to fund the actors who keep it running. Users may pay fees, tokens may appreciate, issuers may earn revenue, and protocols may burn value, but none of these facts by itself shows that authors, miners, validators, suppliers, storage providers, or other critical participants are actually compensated. This paper argues that traditional value-capture analysis often assumes a centralized pool: once value is captured, it can be reallocated through budgets, contracts, payroll, or managerial discretion. Decentralized ecosystems do not have this default pool. They require routed closure: captured value must pass through a verifiable route to a specified critical incentive recipient, and it must be sufficient relative to that recipient's reward requirement. We formalize this distinction through Route-Admissible Value and operationalize it with the External Value Routing Closure protocol. A contrast set including YouTube, Steem/Steemit, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Aave, Filecoin, USDC, and XRP shows why revenue, fees, burns, token prices, or market capitalization should not be mistaken for sustainable incentive funding.

翻译：去中心化生态系统能够捕获价值，却仍可能无法为维持其运行的参与者提供资金。用户可能支付费用，代币可能升值，发行者可能获得收入，协议可能销毁价值，但这些事实本身均不能证明作者、矿工、验证者、供应商、存储提供者或其他关键参与者实际上得到了补偿。本文认为，传统的价值捕获分析通常隐含一个中心化资金池：价值一旦被捕获，即可通过预算、合同、薪资或管理决策进行重新分配。去中心化生态系统缺乏此类默认资金池，它们需要路由闭合：被捕获的价值必须通过可验证的路径传递到指定的关键激励接收者，并且必须足以满足该接收者的奖励需求。我们通过"路由可接受价值"对这一区别进行了形式化，并通过"外部价值路由闭合协议"将其付诸实施。一组对比案例（包括YouTube、Steem/Steemit、比特币、以太坊、Aave、Filecoin、USDC和XRP）表明，收入、费用、销毁量、代币价格或市值不应被误认为是可持续的激励资金。