Just came back from a night run, and I casually checked the mempool, really like a rush hour queue. The moment you click send, the transaction waits at the door, miners/packagers pick and choose, whoever gives the higher "tip" gets processed first. If you set it too low, it stays hanging, looking like there's no response, but actually it's being cut in line, sometimes even bumped or simply expires. The most annoying thing is when the mainnet gets congested, Gas skyrockets along with the heart rate, and canceling also costs money. The more you try to save, the more stuck you get.

Recently, a bunch of new L1/L2 projects are offering incentives to pull TVL, and veteran users in the group complain "mining, selling," making the on-chain activity even livelier, and queues even longer. Anyway, I now only use L2 where I can, and only do non-urgent operations on the mainnet, so I don't have to stare at pending transactions in the middle of the night. Just no more congestion.