I’ve been watching the mempool again lately. When it’s congested, it really feels like lining up for cafeteria food: the transaction you broadcast gets held by the nodes first, and it’s queued according to the priority implied by the fee you set—but it’s not true that “once you’re in line, you’ll definitely go in order.” Some people pay a higher price to cut the line, some repeatedly repackage/replace transactions (with the same nonce), and some transactions just get stuck until they eventually expire or are canceled by you. In plain terms, it comes down to whether miners or sequencers are willing to pay attention to you.

Now, between L2s, there’s daily arguing about TPS, fees, and subsidies. In reality, no matter how fast it gets, you can’t escape the thing that decides it all: “who gets queued up first”—it’s just that each team has its own queue rules. Anyway, when I run into congestion, I first check whether my transaction in pending has been bumped out and whether the gas I set is outrageous, then decide whether to raise the fee or cancel the order. Otherwise, blindly waiting can easily grind down your patience.