Sigh, I made a rookie mistake last week—slippage on a trade wiped out more than half my profit. I’d planned to quickly buy into a newly launched token pool, but the depth was as thin as paper, and I placed the order too hastily. I went in with one sweep and punched through several price levels at once. When I checked the on-chain data afterward, I realized that waiting two minutes and placing limit orders in batches would have avoided a lot of the losses.

At the end of the day, everyone on those Layer 2s compares TPS and fees every day—one side says they’re fast, while also sending subsidies to pull in users. But when it comes to real on-chain transactions, depth and liquidity are what truly matter. No matter how pretty you make the metrics, once real orders show up, you still get exposed. After this, I need to change my order pacing—I’d rather be half a beat slow than chase that “first-mover” greed. That’s it for now; I’ll keep practicing.