Last night before bed, I was scrolling through on-chain data and saw a pile of what looked like “very tasty” price spreads—my hands were itching to jump in.

Then I opened the trading route and took a look: that familiar feeling of being squeezed between the front and the back…
Let’s put it plainly—you think you’re doing arbitrage, but you’re really paying tolls to someone else, and you’re also buying slippage with it, like it’s just a ticket.
The most annoying part about “sandwiching” isn’t that one moment of loss—it’s that you clearly didn’t do anything wrong, yet you get treated like a liquidity ATM.
Recently, the L2s are still arguing about whose TPS, fees, or subsidies are more aggressive. I don’t care about any of that—I only care about this: of course it’s better to be cheaper, but don’t let the transaction fees I save just turn around and get fed to smarter bots instead.
My current approach is pretty timid: small test trades, trading in batches, and I’d rather miss out than chase after those price spreads… sigh.