The other day I was browsing on-chain records and saw a swap sandwiched between two transactions—classic “sandwich” behavior. My first reaction wasn’t even to insult anyone; it was that familiar cold, cynical laugh: you think you’ve stumbled on an opportunity, but really you’re just a slice of someone else’s transaction fees. Put simply, arbitrage looks on the screen like “smart money is at work,” but when it lands in the hands of ordinary people, it often just means you end up working for the faster ones.

I’ve had a particularly gutless experience too: at the time, I noticed a pool with a pretty tempting price spread, and my finger was already hovering over the confirm button. Then the Gas jumped and the slippage changed—suddenly I remembered that line from bull market news: “If you don’t understand it, don’t move.” So I withdrew, right at the last second, hard. Later I checked, and sure enough, a whole string of bots ended up eating it all… In any case, that moment of “chickening out” was probably the tuition I paid for learning.

Now when I look at the crash-and-collapse rhythm of chain games, it’s pretty similar: inflation cranked up, studios flooding in, and once the coin price drops, it spirals down—until the fun is someone else’s, and the people left behind keep finding reasons for it. Market memory, you know, cycles as faithfully as the old radio at my place—only each time it changes its skin to trick you into thinking, “This time is different.” For now, that’s it—I’m not going in hard today.