Last night the network was a bit jammed. I watched the mempool for a while, and it felt like a highway queue: clicking “send” doesn’t mean your transaction gets put on-chain right away—it just drops it into a public waiting room. When it’s congested, miners/validators basically pick the “cars with pricier tickets” to go first; if your fee is lower, your transaction just gets left hanging, or it gets replaced by you topping up the fee (and some even fail outright and burn gas for nothing—that’s really painful). What’s even more annoying is that you think you’re racing against time, but then a bunch of people all surge in at the same second—slippage, front-running, reordering… Anyway, the whole experience feels pretty mystical.

Lately, everyone has been using ETF fund flows and US stock market sentiment to explain market moves, but I think no matter how you describe the market, whether the chain is congested or not, and what spot you’re in—that’s the kind of reality that will directly slap you in the face. Stay steady—don’t rush. As people in Chengdu say: Don’t panic.