Over the past couple of days, I’ve been looking at on-chain transactions, and I’ve been pretty annoyed by this whole “cutting in line” thing. To put it plainly, MEV/ordering is basically: you click confirm, thinking you’re getting in line. But then someone shoves a little stool in front of you and, as a handy bonus, makes the slippage, fees, and execution price look even worse. Who does this affect? The most obvious are small swaps and chasing hot topics—paying a few extra bucks in your wallet isn’t going to bankrupt you, but once it happens often enough, it’s like you’re being quietly taxed. Even the liquidity pools get drained faster, and in the end, it’s still us retail traders who end up paying the bill.

What’s even more frustrating is that outside of the chain, people are still tying ETF fund flows, US stock risk appetite, and crypto’s up-and-down moves together in their interpretation—listening to it, you’d think everything is being dictated by macro factors. But on-chain, the “who goes first, who goes last” rules are what you truly feel with every single trade. Anyway, now I can avoid it, I don’t use high slippage. I’d rather do fewer trades than let myself get emotional and chase in the middle of the night.

What I learned isn’t a technique—it’s this: don’t blame the market’s mood for all your losses and wins. Some losses are just written into the rules.