Last night, I felt itchy to swap a few small coins on-chain, but after a single swap, the slippage before and after felt like I was being pulled along by someone... Later, when I looked into the transaction path, I could basically tell I’d been “cut in line.” In plain terms, when it comes to MEV, the ones who suffer most are small users: you save gas for half a day, but in the end, the chance of getting eaten by ordering is even higher—pretty powerless.

Recently, more narratives about AI Agents automatically placing orders and interacting have been popping up, and I find it a bit complicated: on the one hand, they claim “smarter and fairer,” but in reality, they’ve made the race-to-the-front, sandwiching, and reordering more automated. If we really want to talk about fairness, it probably has to start with who can get into the same bundle and who can see the mempool... Anyway, I’m more inclined to use private routing/protection modes now: batch when possible, give others fewer chances to get ahead of you, prioritize security first—whether you make money or not is another matter.