Just saw a sandwich-attack tx record, and I suddenly felt a bit reflective.

You think it’s spread-capture, but to others, you’re only a fish bait wrapped up. Plainly put, the MEV of sandwich attacks is an arms race between arbitrageurs—who has the faster network, who squeezes in before their bubble bursts, and whoever becomes the fish becomes the net.

I’ve seen a lot of newcomers rush in to grab the price spread, and in the end they burn through a whole row of gas, not even earning back the trading fees. It’s really like using a fishing net in a frying pan to scoop up bubbles. They make a flurry of moves as fierce as a tiger, but what they catch is all evaporating air. I’d rather squat at the edge of the big pond, waiting for opportunities like those “silent ripples”—for example, when a stablecoin pool temporarily deviates from 1:1 by zero point something bips, just place a small order and leave it there to pick up the crumbs.

Recently, on the macro side, everyone’s been talking about interest-rate cut expectations and the linkage between risk assets, and it’s made short-term price swings pretty bewildering. Anyway, I also can’t make sense of it, so I’ll just keep guarding the edge of the pool without moving. Go slower—turns out you end up paying fewer sandwich-attack fees.