I've recently been fixated on MEV and it's been getting to me. To put it simply, who goes first or last in a block isn't really "queueing for a ticket"; it's more like someone with a faster lane sneaking in ahead of you. The ones most affected aren't the "market," but ordinary people with their swaps, mints, and orders: slippage gets eaten, transaction prices get distorted, and even if you think you've confirmed, the order has already been changed once.

What's more awkward is that while everyone is arguing over whether NFT royalties should be mandatory, they also assume that the "cut-in line cost" in the secondary market can be ignored... Creators want income, traders want liquidity, but the sorting power in the middle ends up taking a cut from both sides.

My current clumsy approach is: avoid chasing hot mints, carefully check permissions before signing, set limits where possible, withdraw when possible, losing your keys once is really enough to make you suffer for a long time. Anyway, I prefer to go slower rather than become someone else's fuel.