When you see that on-chain kind of moment—“I just clicked confirm, and the price just drifted”—don’t rush to praise yourself for catching an opportunity. Most likely, you’ve been sandwich-attacked: you think you’re doing arbitrage, but in reality you’re just paying other people fees plus slippage taxes. Especially lately, when those new L1/L2s roll out incentives to pull in TVL and everyone charges in all at once, it’s not surprising that old users end up cursing “MEV mining and selling”—when liquidity is thin, it’s easiest to become someone else’s fuel.

To put it bluntly, with arbitrage, there aren’t many scraps ordinary people can actually eat; most of the time, what you see is a route that someone else has already figured out. By the time you jump in, all that’s left for you is the exhaust. Next time I’ll be even lazier: I won’t chase hot pools, I won’t use high slippage, and I’d rather earn less than become a human MEV target. How do you usually avoid sandwich attacks—do you just not chase these “opportunities” on-chain anymore?