I was watching the mempool yesterday, and it really felt like rush hour on the subway: you think clicking "Send" is all there is to it, but actually you're just waiting in line in the pool, being cut in line by a bunch of transactions with higher gas; then when the routing changes or the pool price fluctuates, if the slippage isn't enough, it just fails, wasting the fee for nothing—so frustrating. What's more annoying is that the longer you wait, the more it feels like you're feeding a sandwich to a robot, which looks at your path and amount, takes a bite, then spits it back out... Basically, during congestion, you're competing with both people and machines for the same lane. Recently, there's been a heated debate about the "compound yield" of staking/sharing security. I think when network congestion hits, the so-called compounded returns might first be eaten up by congestion fees and MEV, and in the end, it's still you who pays the bill. Anyway, I now either split my transactions, increase fault tolerance, or just wait until things cool down before sending, to avoid paying tuition for others.