Recently, I keep seeing a bunch of people complain that “cutting in line” is unfair. Basically, whoever gets packaged first and gets the price first profits, while the ones behind just end up as passive bag-holders. The biggest impact on retail investors isn’t actually “making less”—it’s that they clearly picked a normal swap, but the slippage feels like someone casually reached in and twisted it, and the execution price looks so frustrating… Then everyone starts targeting miners/validators for their income, and that’s understandable, since the bills at the end of the day get spread into the trades.

I’ve been watching the mempool for a long time, and I feel like “completely fair ordering” sounds really nice—but on-chain space is essentially an auction. Whoever pays higher fees gets priority, and it’s hard to argue that logic back into place. The truly outrageous part is the behind-the-scenes deal-making: private bundling, sandwich attacks, and rollbacks—users don’t even know where they lost. There are a lot of tutorials, but I personally prefer the kind that teaches you how to identify when your transaction gets sandwiched, and how to tweak parameters or switch routes to take fewer hits. At least that way you can pay less “tuition.” Anyway, now if I can use a limit order I use a limit order, and if I can split it into batches I split it—don’t go toe-to-toe with the hot pools.