Recently, the group is arguing again about miner/validator income, MEV, and whether ordering is fair. To be blunt, retail investors don’t really need to study “block builders, bundles” like academic papers. Knowing these three things is basically enough: the transactions you submit may get sandwiched or inserted ahead of others; some “bundles” that get packaged into one batch are designed in advance by other people in a specific order; the more you sprint after hot spots and the more you let slippage get too large, the more likely it is to become someone else’s meal.

For me, the most effective way to avoid impulsive trades is to force a 5-minute delay: first close the transaction window, take a quick look at the mempool/explorer to see whether similar fills show any anomalies, then come back and reduce the slippage and gas a bit—or just wait for the next block… In any case, I’d rather make a little less than pay tuition to MEV. After running nodes for a long time, I’ve found that infrastructure is pretty boring, but at least it helps people stay calm.