Riding the subway and checking on-chain data, I found everyone arguing about "fair trading," and in the end, they all circle back to MEV: You think clicking confirm puts you in line, but really you're just slipping a note into a transparent box, while miners/validators and a bunch of bots outside pick the order—who tips more, who runs faster, gets on first. To put it plainly, the biggest victims of "queue jumping" aren't the whales, but the ordinary folks who set conservative slippage and just want to honestly swap some coins—their transaction prices get pushed out little by little, and their patience wears thin.

What's even more crazy is that hardware wallets have been out of stock lately, phishing links are everywhere, and everyone's security awareness has improved: double-check before signing, don't click on unfamiliar links… but this invisible hand of on-chain ordering, no matter how cautious you are, is hard to defend against. Anyway, I now prefer to be slower, split my transactions into batches, and avoid racing with bots.