Over the past two days, I’ve been seeing people talk about “sandwiching” and “arbitrage,” like it’s picking up money… But the more I look, the more I feel that a lot of the time what you see as an opportunity is actually just others collecting your transaction fees. Especially that brief, momentary slippage on-chain—the one where a retail trader gets squeezed because they were just a bit slow.

When miners/validators on the other side make more, everyone starts complaining about ordering being unfair, and I’m honestly pretty conflicted about it. On the one hand, they’re literally earning by following the rules; on the other hand, it’s really hard for ordinary people to tell whether they’re “participating in the market,” or whether they’re just becoming the source of liquidity + fees. Anyway, these days when I place orders, I try to split them into smaller portions and keep the slippage as low as possible—I’d rather make/get a little less than end up being used as a case study… take it slow.