Just now, looking at my transaction in the mempool, it was like waiting in line to buy bubble tea… I clearly placed the order, but on the chain, it just doesn’t get called. During congestion, it’s probably like this: you first put your transaction into the pool, miners/block producers pick and bundle them, if the fee isn’t high enough, you get left behind, and with bad luck, you might even get pushed further back, or even stuck trying to cancel or accelerate your transaction. The most frustrating part is that psychological gap between “I definitely pressed send” and the wallet interface still looking pretty calm.

By the way, I thought about the recent social mining trend, paying attention as if your attention is like computing power—sounds pretty exciting—but when it comes to queuing on the chain, you realize attention doesn’t help you cut in line… Anyway, I’m currently testing small amounts during congestion, instead of going all-in with a big transaction right away and staring at the spinning circle.