Just now on the chain, I swapped a small coin, almost got "cut in line" and educated... I was using a normal slippage, watching the transaction go through okay, but then I compared the order in the block, someone else ate the liquidity first, and I took a worse price later, losing profit and paying more in fees, which felt more like paying tolls. To put it simply, this MEV sorting game doesn't just affect "smart money," it mostly impacts retail traders like me who just click casually: even on the same chain, queuing depends on who they look at.

Recently, there are new L1/L2 incentives to attract TVL, old users complain about "mining, selling, and dumping," which I thought was exaggerated, but today I got a bit scared: if I keep swapping a few more times out of recklessness, I might just be providing liquidity and paying fees for others. Anyway, in the future, I’ll try to split large transactions into smaller batches, avoid chasing hot pools, and prefer to go slow, at least not get cut in line and doubt my life.