I used to really misunderstand: on-chain data is "real-time," how could it be that I click and it stalls for a moment, it must be the project messing around. Now that I've been educated by rug pulls more, I realize that many front-ends aren't reading directly from your wallet to the chain, but are using indexers/Subgraphs—these "pre-organized" databases. When they are syncing or the backend is queuing, you'll see transactions that are on the chain but the page refreshes a few seconds later; plus, with RPC rate limiting, during peak times, a bunch of people hitting the same entry point, requests get throttled, and it feels like "lag."

Especially with meme tokens where attention shifts quickly, when a celebrity shouts, everyone rushes in, and the data side first collapses... veteran players say don't take the last step, and I now believe that. Even the data is starting to struggle, so do you still expect to reliably catch that perfect moment? Anyway, when I see a "lag," I first check the transaction/hash and whether the project wallet has moved, then decide whether to keep watching.