Recently, I’ve been seeing a bunch of “arbitrage opportunities” on-chain. My first reaction wasn’t excitement—it was to check the two trades before and after: large orders in the same direction pushing in, filling up your slippage, then snapping out after trapping you… The “profit” you see is often just the source of fees someone else has already calculated. Put simply, a sandwich attack isn’t a bet on direction—it’s a bet on whether you’ll be unable to resist clicking confirm.

Some people also use the whole L2 “water-cooling battle” routine—“higher TPS, lower fees, and more aggressive subsidies”—to comfort themselves into switching pools however they want. But the more they argue, the more lively it gets, and the more segmented liquidity becomes in chunks, giving bots more room to find the right paths and timing. Anyway, my rule now is just one: when I see the price jump and trades pile up, I move slower. I’d rather earn less than become someone else’s trading fee.