I've been moderately surprised that few defi/staking users know mining, and few miners know defi.  But I've found this to be more or less true.

I've staked almost everything continuously since maybe my second month mining, which was during defi summer.  So I participated in sushiswap pretty early on when it was still just a piggyback on uniswap.

As said above, you have to know up front that defi is higher risk than straight up mining to a cold wallet.  The risks can be technical, custodial, financial and economic.  But on the other hand the payoff generally follows from the risk/reward curve.

I mitigate some of the risk by diversifying.  So different wallets, different chains, different platforms within the chains.  It then becomes more to keep track of and understand, but frankly defi is more of a consuming hobby for me than mining, so not only do I not mind the learning curve but I actually enjoy it.  When I no longer enjoy it, I'll find other pursuits.

I do only enter the more risky platforms/farms with much smaller size.  I was lucky on some, like entering BNB/Cake in I think Feb '20 which both went at least 6x.  Then I do take a lot off the table when I can play with only the 'house money' and sell mostly into BTC and Ether.  But then likewise, I do stake that BTC and Eth on solid platforms like Aave to get direct yield from those as well as borrow stables at low utilization levels and stake those.

I've been adjacent to hacks and exploits, but thus far I've more or less avoided direct exploit exposure.  I can indeed call that mostly luck, but as I said I don't go into any one thing with much size.  I've also gotten a good amount of free tokens from using platforms via airdrops, those have turned out to be pretty good money as of themselves and imo paid me back some for the gas and risk used and taken.

ymmv, do research and don't risk what you'd mind losing.