Just now, I lost a small transaction in the middle of the night, the amount was just over 0.003, and it ended up queuing in the mempool to the point I thought I clicked the wrong network... Basically, during congestion, everyone is crowded at the entrance, your transaction gets first shoved into the "waiting room," and miners/validators will prioritize those with higher fees. The rest can only continue to lie there and wait until it expires or you add more fee to push yourself forward.

I usually glance at the gas trend first and don't try to push through aggressively; I’d rather wait 40 more seconds than find out later that my slippage was swallowed or I got sniped. Recently, there’s been a lot of noise about NFT royalties, which is somewhat similar: on-chain space is limited, whoever bids higher gets to go first, creators want to earn more, secondary markets want smoother transactions, and in the end, it all boils down to "who will pay the bill"... Anyway, when I see abnormal transfers or suddenly skyrocketing fees, my first reaction is to pause and just leave it at that.