So I talked about Hyperliquid's priority fees, but this problem isn't new.

Trading has always been a speed game.
The faster you are, the more money you make.
This has been true in stock markets for decades.
Back in 2010, trading firms paid 100 times more for a new fiber optic line just to stay competitive, not to make more money, just to not fall behind. And they knew microwave networks would make it obsolete within years.
They paid anyway.
One firm actually went under in Europe because they didn't build a microwave network fast enough.
That's how brutal the speed game gets.
Academics said this was a $5 billion hidden tax on markets.
Practitioners said that's nonsense, total HFT revenue in US equities was under $1 billion across all strategies.
The same firms winning were also losing.
It's money going back and forth between them.
People tried different fixes, slow down trading, batch orders together, add speed bumps. None of them really worked because you can't take speed out of markets.
Priority fees try something else.
Instead of being the fastest, you can just pay for priority.
The money gets burned instead of going to some server company.
It doesn't remove the advantage; it just makes it accessible to anyone willing to pay for it.