Just got educated by the mempool. I set the gas neither too low nor too high, and then, right before my eyes, the transaction got stuck for half an hour. In the end, it was pushed out by a rush. I was so mad that I even thought my wallet had frozen.

Honestly, when the chain’s been congested recently, if you stare at that pending list, it’s like watching your own fate get auctioned off by someone else. If you bid too low, miners won’t even look at it. If you bid too high, you’re afraid of getting sandwiched by MEV bots. Anyway, you never know whether the transaction next to you is a normal user or an arbitrage script.

If I’d had the nerve to crank the gas up until it would “barely die,” maybe I would’ve gotten out earlier. But that’s just human nature—you always want to save that tiny bit, and the market educates you even more painfully for it.

Over there, they’re still arguing whether NFT royalties or secondary liquidity dies first. Over here, the mempool has already choked your own liquidity first. For now, that’s it. I’ll keep watching the order book, waiting to see who breaks first.