Lately, people keep asking me if "sandwich/arbitrage is an opportunity," and I just want to laugh... The piece of meat you see is probably just the fee that slipped out of someone’s teeth. To put it simply, you click on a swap thinking you're clever, but your trading intent is pretty much like holding up a sign in the mempool—pushing back and forth, and once slippage kicks in, the money is just paid as transaction fees.

I used to be quite stubborn, always saying "I only look at on-chain data," believing that prices are all written in the data. But I later realized that’s not enough; when ETF capital flows or the risk appetite of the US stock market heat up, no matter how clean the on-chain data is, it can’t stop human collective hype... Conversely, I also tried "only looking at sentiment," but when sentiment shifts, arbitrage bots will run away before you do.

Now I just see cross-chain fee stations as: I’m not afraid of you crossing the bridge, I’m afraid you don’t have proof and still think you’re a VIP. The only things I can do are to avoid chasing hot pools, reduce large slippage, and use private routing when possible. As for the rest... recognizing that many times you’re just someone else’s fee source will make your mindset a lot better.