Recently, I’ve been seeing people argue about MEV, ordering, and fairness. Put simply, even on-chain, there will still be people cutting in line—it’s just not humans shoulder-to-shoulder with you, it’s bots pushing in front of you. I used to think the main impact was on “pros” and “retail suckers,” but when I think about it more, the bigger traps are for the kind of people who just, really honestly, place orders at market price: the execution price gets nudged away a bit, the slippage gets a bit worse, and in the end they still have to pay more in fees. It’s also this group whose mindset breaks first.

After a few cross-chain bridge thefts, I actually understand everyone’s current consensus of “waiting for confirmation” even better now. Sometimes the oracle reports some wildly off price—if you don’t wait a moment, you might just happen to become someone else’s lunch. Fairness may not be something you can fix all at once, but I think what you can do is build good habits: don’t rush to chase one or two trades; I’d rather go slower, place orders in batches, and set up protections. Over the long run, it becomes less likely that you’ll get cut in line and taken advantage of. Anyway, when I switch to small-cabin mode, I watch the market less, and my hands feel steadier.