I just came across a group chat where people were discussing sandwich arbitrage. Someone posted a screenshot showing how much they made, and below it there were tons of “big shots, take me with you.” I looked at that trade record. Honestly, in that profit, half of it was slippage that someone else would have been able to profit from in the first place—so basically you’re earning the extra fees the other party paid. Arbitrage itself is not a problem, but don’t dress it up as some kind of “value discovery” or “technically amazing.” To put it bluntly, it’s just cutting in line.

Recently, I’ve been seeing ETF fund flows and U.S. stock risk appetite interpreted together, and everyone’s guessing whether crypto will pull back along with the U.S. market. But I think the on-chain liquidity power struggle is completely different from the direction of macro fund flows—don’t mix them up. As for my own approach, I’m willing to spend a few extra minutes checking MEV protection on DEXs, or even use a slower transaction path. You lose a bit of efficiency, but at least you won’t get sandwiched for no good reason. When it comes to security, spending more time is worth more than spending more money.