Over at around 3 a.m., I can’t sleep. I checked the mempool—sure enough, it’s clogged up like the evening rush hour. I looked at the status of the gas war: some transactions, just to get the race started, directly dump 2 ETH worth of gas into the pool, all to reach five seconds earlier than the previous transaction. Honestly, it’s pretty outrageous.

During peak congestion, the intuitive feeling is that your slippage protection might not be enough at all—because someone front-runs you. By the time you get in, the price has already flown. Even worse, there are those MEV bots lying in wait. When they see you’ve bid higher gas, they hit you with a sandwich. You wanted to avoid it, but then you end up colliding with it.

My approach now is: when I see gas spiking, I don’t force my way in. Either use some routing that supports private transactions, or just wait until the queue clears. Protecting slippage isn’t always just about setting a defense—it’s also about making sure you’re not the first to step out. As for that other side of chain gaming… honestly, I used to think the in-game deflationary mechanics could at least hold out for a while. But after seeing that spiral of high-yield production + studios farming volume + the token price steadily northbound (i.e., not down), I’m not touching it.

That’s it—rolling off to sleep.