When the mempool is congested, it really feels like waiting for a bus during the evening rush: the transaction you send is just standing at the back of the line. In front of you, there’s a crowd of people paying extra, cutting in line, and even getting bundled together with the label “riding along that same route” to board at the same time. You think you’re only paying a fee, but in reality, you’re also buying a spot based on who sees it first—and how it gets queued… Over the past few days, some people have also been complaining about validator/miner earnings and MEV. As for fairness, honestly, it’s not that pure. Retail users are the easiest to be treated as background noise.

There’s just too much information, and the more I look, the more anxious I get. Right now, I’m only watching two things: confirmation time distribution (don’t get stuck for too long) + the reasons for failures and retries. I’m not paying attention to the other tricks for now. If it’s low frequency, then so be it—I’d rather be slow than let my emotions run wild and end up paying higher fees just to get that bit of breathing room.