These days, I’ve found the mempool pretty interesting: when the chain is jammed, your transaction is basically like “joining a line to buy a ticket.” It gets broadcast to the nodes first and waits to be picked up by miners/validators. They choose what to include—if the fee you offer isn’t high enough, your transaction gets pushed back. As you get pushed further and further back, it may eventually expire or get replaced (someone outbids you), or you might get impatient and add a higher fee yourself. In plain terms, it’s not “submit = success,” it’s more like “I’m just checking in first.”

I happened to run into this right around the time of a major public chain upgrade/maintenance, and the group was also speculating whether the ecosystem would migrate… I’d say these are the signals to watch: a sudden spike in exchange inflows, a surge in stablecoin cross-chain volume, and a mempool that stays piled up for a long time without clearing—those look like someone is genuinely moving.

Yesterday, my mom asked me, “Didn’t you click send? Why is it still stuck for half a day?” I could only give her a half-answer: there’s also traffic congestion on-chain—those who paid the toll get to go first… Anyway, when things are congested now, I’d rather move less, or set my slippage/expiration time more conservatively, and not rush to squeeze in with the crowd.