I used to be quite stubborn, always saying "I only look at on-chain data," thinking that watching the mempool queue meant I had the true picture... But when I actually encountered congestion, I realized that the chain can also "hit a bottleneck." Transactions broadcast first get queued in the pool, and if the gas isn't high enough, they keep getting pushed to the back, with others constantly paying higher fees to jump the line. Your transaction might go from "almost confirmed" to "waiting forever," or even get replaced/expired in the end. Some contracts in the path might revert directly because the state changed, wasting a fee for nothing, which really messes with your mindset.

Recently, everyone compares RWA, US bond yields, and on-chain yield products together. I also glance at them casually, but honestly, no matter how good the returns are, if you can't get through the on-chain execution part, it's all empty: you can't enter during congestion, can't exit, and liquidation points won't wait for you. Now I want to correct myself: when looking at on-chain data, you also need to consider sentiment. At least when you see the mempool starting to pile up and the base fee rising, don’t force it—prefer to go slower, split your orders, or just wait and see... That’s how I do it anyway.