Today I watched the mempool for a while, and I still get that kind of feeling: you think you’re looking for arbitrage, but a lot of the time you’re being used as the meat in someone else’s sandwich. Especially those paths that look like they have a “nice enough price spread” at first glance—someone is already lined up in the queue with their moves all set. The moment you raise your hand and place an order, they just as conveniently scoop up the transaction fees and the slippage.

Recently, around the main-chain upgrade/maintenance, everyone in the group has been guessing whether there will be a migration. My gut feeling is: whether it migrates or not—let’s not even talk about that first. When volatility spikes and routing gets messy, the sandwiches just end up getting more active… Anyway, whenever I see an opportunity now, I first ask myself one question: is this really a price spread, or is someone setting up a toll booth. That’s it for now.