Lately I've been looking at that MEV "queue jumping" thing—who does it really hurt? Honestly, it's about who gets to the front of the line first in the same block. You might think it's just arbitrage traders and front-runners fighting each other, but the unluckiest are the regular traders who just swap honestly: if they route a bit farther or loosen the slippage, it’s like they’re holding up a sign that says "Come take it."

New L1/L2 incentives to boost TVL make the chain lively, but I totally get why veteran users complain about "extraction and front-running": a bunch of people are just trying to grab rewards, trading volume goes up, but the trading experience gets worse. Who ends up paying for the gains from queue jumping or front-running?… It’s not falling from the sky.
Right now, I like doing small experiments: for the same trade, change the routing, adjust the slippage tolerance, or even send it at a different time—sometimes the execution price can vary quite a bit. Fairness on the chain is hard to judge, but at least don’t mistake "being queue-jumped" for your own mistake; often, you’re just losing the queue.