Just looked at that on-chain swap transaction, even though my price difference wasn't big, I still got "cut in line," and the slippage suddenly looked bad... To be honest, it's not that I'm slow, but the sorting rules simply don't care who you are. The most annoying part is that these costs ultimately fall on ordinary people: you think you're paying more in fees, but actually a portion is taken by the middleman who gets snatched away.

Recently, I saw someone complain that validators/miners are increasingly relying on MEV to make a living. I understand they need to earn money too, but this kind of "who can insert in front of the block wins" gameplay is really mysterious in terms of fairness. Anyway, all I can do now is: avoid hard pushing in the most crowded pools, prefer to wait a bit longer, or split the orders... saving that could be a matter of life or death.