This morning I checked on-chain data, and saw a transaction being sandwiched pretty hard on a non-mainstream DEX. Gas fees spiked to something ridiculous, and in the end the execution price slipped so much that it went completely off the rails. In plain terms, someone cut in front of you—“cutting the line”—pushing the price up, and you’re left holding the bag. In these ordering games, retail traders basically can’t compete; even me, who watches the mempool every day, sometimes can’t quite figure out how they’ll split the order.

Lately, the group keeps reposting rumors about stablecoin depegging. Yesterday someone even shared a screenshot claiming there’s something wrong with a certain reserve audit report, and the sentiment blew up instantly. I looked into it for a long time, and I felt that on-chain data is actually more reliable than those screenshots—but people would rather trust calls and stay anxious than take a minute to check the flow of funds themselves. Sometimes I’m also guilty of being lazy—I need someone to remind me, “Don’t just look at the surface; go check the on-chain transfer records.”

Anyway, with MEV, it’s not just a technical issue—it directly affects the baseline of what you think is “fair.” On-chain isn’t a utopia; it’s another round of game theory. I sometimes rely a lot on these kinds of reminders, otherwise I tend to drift.