Recently, people keep asking whether you really need to understand things like block builders and bundles—down to the level of being able to write code. I think retail investors only need to know three things:

First, the transaction you send out might not get added to the chain in the “order you clicked to confirm.” In the middle, someone packages and sorts transactions, and they may even bundle a bunch of transactions together and stuff them in.

Second, if you see “why does it get wiped out by slippage the moment I buy / why do I get sandwiched when I sell,” don’t start questioning your life right away. A lot of the time, it’s just that someone cut in line ahead of you—especially if you’re using a public mempool, dealing with large amounts, or trading in pools with low liquidity.

Third, the self-protection you can do is pretty straightforward: don’t randomly set an excessively high slippage tolerance; try to use entry points with private routing/protection; and don’t force your way through during especially congested times. The rest is simply accepting that this market isn’t about standing in line to get bubble tea.

Basically, what block builders and bundles mean for you most directly is this: you think you’re “trading,” but you’re actually participating in a sorting game.

By the way, looking at the current social mining and fan token setup—the “attention is mining” idea—I always feel it’s a bit like MEV: you think you’re posting/interacting, but behind the scenes someone is still doing “packaging and distribution,” except the target shifts from transactions to attention. Anyway, I’ll just lower my slippage a bit. That’s it.