Today the blockchain was a bit congested, and I was staring at the mempool in a daze before I realized: after you click confirm, you're basically lining up. Miners/validators look at how high your "tip" is; if it's attractive enough, they'll prioritize you, if not, you'll keep floating in the pool, or even get kicked out after a while. The most annoying thing is that kind of stuck-in-the-middle state, feeling like you're waiting in line without knowing how many people are ahead of you.

So now I generally avoid fighting congestion head-on, preferring to go slower, splitting interactions, confirming one transaction before sending the next, and not letting the fees skyrocket to ridiculous levels. Recently, there's been a lot of noise about staking and sharing security with the "compound yields" approach. Honestly, the more it goes on, the more it feels like a race against time—when the chain is congested and the queue is long, the first to break isn't usually the tech, but the people... Anyway, I’m just taking a Zen approach: if it goes through, it goes through; if not, then forget it.