To be honest, every time I trade lately, I have to wrestle for five minutes—whether to go through the mainnet or use a layer 2. The mainnet is stable, but the gas is really enough to get under your skin, especially when volatility picks up in the market—if you’re a second slow, you lose money. Layer 2 is cheaper, but I always worry that a bridge might have an issue and get funds stuck, and some small apps are only deployed on one specific layer 2, so switching back and forth is also a pain.

My approach is: for small amounts that I do frequently, I go with the layer 2—like I’ve set aside some ETH on arb and op for backup; for large transactions or when I need to interact with contracts, I still go back to the mainnet the old-fashioned way, just to avoid living on edge. There’s really no perfect solution anyway—I just want peace of mind.

Lately, the NFT space has been arguing again: royalties and liquidity always end up clashing. Creators want income, buyers want freedom to trade—both sides make sense, but I think, plain and simple, it’s mostly a market issue. Everyone is rushing. I’m not picking sides; I just play around with a few cheaper things. There’s too much information to keep up with, so I’ll just focus on apps that have already been running for over a year—at least you can tell whether the “shell” is solid.