I used to think that on-chain transactions were just "who clicks first, who completes first," but after being educated, I realized that cutting in line isn't something you can solve with faster clicking. Now, looking at MEV/ordering, the biggest impact is actually on ordinary people making small exchanges or stop-loss orders: slippage inexplicably increases, and the transaction price seems to be read in advance, making you think you just clicked too slowly.

It's not that all "front-running" is heinous; some are actually fixing the spread, but frankly, the cost ultimately falls on the users. Now I see projects are less concerned about their proclaimed fairness vision and more about whether the ordering rules are clearly written, whether there are emergency switches, and how to rollback/compensate if something goes wrong.

Recently, AI agents for automatic interactions have become popular again, and the narrative is quite lively, but my first reaction is: the more automated it is, the easier it is to push you into someone else's better "cut-in line" track... Anyway, I now prefer to go slower, sign fewer permissions, and not hand myself over to "automatic optimality."