It’s pouring rain when I head out today, and the road is jammed like a mempool queue. Every traffic light feels like it’s waiting for the gas price to be pushed up into the sky. After submitting a transaction, I’ve been sitting there for half an hour with no confirmation, and it reminds me of the last time I farmed an airdrop—when the task platform was anti-bot and the point rolls were as intense as going to work. If your transaction wasn’t fast enough and your gas wasn’t high enough, it would just get stuck in the pending pool and sit there collecting dust. To put it simply, mempool congestion is a combination of road conditions and the weather—you just wait it out, or you pay more to cut the line. Anyway, I’m used to it now: if I’m in a hurry, I raise the gas; if I’m not, I leave it there—an on-chain traffic-jam observer, basically.