I see people talking about sandwich arbitrage, saying "transaction fees are also part of the profit"… okay, but for someone like me who triple-checks on-chain approvals, my first reaction isn't to calculate profit—it's to wonder if that bot has a backdoor.

MEV—you think you're picking up leftovers, but really you're the one being picked. Their latency is faster than your heartbeat; no matter how tight you set your slippage, you can still get sandwiched, let alone the fact that some pools now deliberately cultivate this kind of "ecosystem." Privacy coins are having a big debate about compliance, but honestly, between being fully exposed on-chain and completely invisible, the only options for ordinary people are "move less" and "use multi-sig."

My current approach is pretty boring: large amounts go into hardware, daily use is multi-sig, and whenever I see "risk-free arbitrage," I first assume I'm the fuel. Anyway, I'll stop here—I still need to go through a few old approvals tonight. Sleeping soundly is more important than earning an extra two percent.