Just re-watched an on-chain transaction and ran into that plot again: “I clearly clicked first, but someone else executed first”… Basically, MEV/ordering is cutting in line, and the line-cutter even comes with an accelerator. The impact isn’t just that small retail traders get hit with bigger slippage—this whole chain of market making, liquidation, and arbitrage also gets rattled along with it. In the end, the experience becomes this: you think you’re trading with the market, but really you’re playing a psychological war with a bunch of people watching the mempool.

What’s even more annoying is that a lot of on-chain data tools’ labels are still criticized for being lagging, and sometimes even able to mislead you. They look like “a whale is entering,” but when you chase after it, you find it’s just a nested transfer performance… Now when I read these address profiles at all hours, I have to ask myself first: is it a real person, or a director? Anyway, the later it gets and the more I scroll through this stuff, the more I feel the word “fairness” is kind of a luxury on-chain—but the best I can do is try not to jump into the chaos during crowded time slots.