Just saw a sandwich transaction on BSC: gas cost 0.2 BNB, the MEV bot made $40, and the victim—who got sandwiched—probably still hasn’t noticed that they’ve overpaid more than ten dollars in slippage by now. When I was a beginner, I also thought arbitrage was all about being fast and front-running—later I realized it’s not really the case. A lot of the “opportunities” you see are, many times, traps carefully set up by others; you’re just the fee.

Recently, many projects have been running testnets to earn points. Everyone’s guessing whether the mainnet will issue tokens, but I’m not very willing to blindly rush in. Those testnet points, to put it bluntly, are just stored supplies. When the mainnet launches, if the DEX liquidity isn’t deep enough, you’ll still get completely wiped out by sandwiches. Sometimes I watch transactions on-chain moving incredibly fast, and I think: those orders from retail traders like us are just a fee in the eyes of MEV bots. We’d be better off honestly watching the slippage and not acting like fuel.