I watched Dexscreener for a long time and found that an MEV bot in a small pool is “cutting in line” again, very elegantly. Honestly, it’s pretty interesting—you can say it’s unfair: they just outbid you on Gas and can calculate slippage better. But you can also say it’s fair in the sense that retail orders get sandwiched in the middle; the execution price jumps up directly by a noticeable margin. Anyone would feel uncomfortable about that.

Lately, hardware wallets have been sold out badly. I keep wondering if everyone is starting to get scared. After all, phishing links are everywhere—one slip and your authorization is gone.

Anyway, whenever I’m dealing with a project that requires interaction, I first check whether the approve in the contract has an “approve that never expires.” It’s pretty terrifying.

As for ordering and fairness, I’m increasingly convinced that on-chain is fundamentally a “whoever bids gets priority” venue. Full-on egalitarianism isn’t very realistic. But for some newer chains or L2s that have made adjustments to transaction packing and ordering, at least they help so retail users aren’t left too far behind.

My own take is: rather than complain about queue-cutting, it’s better to study how those “queue cutters” calculate their profits—so you can avoid their optimal path. In the meantime, I’m still slowly looking at differences in AMM curve shapes. Some pools actually hide pretty clear price-spread opportunities, as long as you can tolerate it enough. Forget it—let’s leave it at that. I’ll keep observing.