People keep asking who gets really hurt by on-chain front-running (MEV). To put it simply, it’s not “stealing your money,” but rather selling the order of your transactions: you think you’re executing at the price you set, but in reality, someone snatches the order, increasing slippage and making the trade worse, especially for small funds with less bargaining power. What’s more annoying is that the front-runners also cause congestion similar to rush hour, and ordinary users can only pay extra for a lane fee.

Recently, the collapse of the on-chain gaming economy looks quite similar: inflation plus studios running scripts in bulk, first eating up all the “ordering/execution advantage,” leaving other players in a spiral of token prices. Don’t blindly trust “on-chain fairness,” blockchains only guarantee consistent rules, not that you’ll be placed at the front. My own approach is simple: set a limit price when possible, don’t give huge slippage randomly, check the mempool before trading, and if it’s really congested, wait a bit to avoid paying tuition for others.