I watched the mempool for a long time, and saw a transaction with a high gas fee jump the queue to frontrun. The guy behind it is probably so mad he could vomit.

I used to think MEV was far away from me, but now I realize these “cut-in” tactics are pretty common. Especially on some chains when block space is tight: you’ve already signed your orders and are ready, but someone can squeeze you to the back just by stuffing in a slightly bigger tip. Tell me—does that count as fairness? What’s the difference from someone cutting the line at a train station to buy a ticket, except the code just looks nicer?

Recently I saw people complaining that certain data-labeling systems are lagging behind, and can even be manipulated with fake rankings to mislead people. But really, you should have thought about this long ago: for the ordering you can see, who comes first and who comes after, there are still who-knows how many layers of “queue management” underneath. MEV is just putting the order that was originally hidden onto the stage.

Anyway, I feel that on-chain “fairness” is basically a quota-based order: whoever can afford it gets to go first. But if it were fully transparent throughout, that would be fine—what I worry about is those who rely on information asymmetry quietly cutting in without making a sound… Oh well, let’s leave it at that for now.