These past couple of days, I’ve been watching a few big exchanges for swaps again. On the surface, the slippage doesn’t look very large, but if you replay the trades’ order, you’ll find that “cutting in line” kind of feeling: you think that once you hit confirm, you’ve lined up, but really someone has a better position and squeezes in ahead of you. In the end, the ones who lose out are often not whales, but people like me—small amounts, and too lazy to repeatedly tweak the slippage... To put it plainly, MEV might not empty your account outright, but it will slowly grind away your sense of “fairness.”

On the public-opinion side, they still keep using ETF capital flows and the U.S. stock market’s risk appetite to explain crypto’s ups and downs—I see it too. But I can’t help feeling that the on-chain layer’s ordering game is more direct: with the same market moves, some people get to eat first, others get the leftovers, and some even get splashed. Anyway, I need to be reminded: don’t just stare at candlestick charts and macro narratives—occasionally look back and see how your transaction was actually arranged, and cut down on self-deprecating jokes like, “Why did I buy again in such a weird position?” That’s it for now.