Just now, I snatched a small claim—on-chain it was like the early-morning rush, with a pile of transactions queuing up in the mempool. You think clicking it is the end of it, but actually you get stuffed into the waiting room first: miners and block builders look at who offers the higher tips, who’s more “worth it,” and your little scraps can only squeeze in first. If you wait too long, you might even get stuck with a nonce deadlock, and then every transaction behind it gets blocked by you… I just stared blankly at the pending transactions, my eyes aching like crazy, my neck stiff too, like watching a slow-motion “confirmation.”

Basically, when the network is congested, the most expensive thing isn’t gas—it’s your mindset. Once chain games with inflation plus studio bots roll in, the chain gets even busier, and the coin price just spirals downward. In the end, everyone is stuck burning time in line. Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson now: for small amounts, I don’t hard-fight the peak rush—I just pick them up slowly, and waiting in the queue becomes a kind of practice.