I went over the trade records and realized that I botched a deal a while back. Thinking back still feels a bit painful. At the time, I had my eyes on a token and thought the liquidity looked okay, so I didn’t think too much and just placed a market-price order to jump in directly. The result was that the slippage was way more extreme than I expected—the execution average price ended up a few percentage points higher than anticipated. After this trade, my gains were basically wiped out.

Later, when I reviewed it, I found out the pool depth back then was actually pretty thin. It likely happened to coincide with the staking unlock period—everyone was worried about sell pressure, and the order book had only a few scattered bids/asks. My single order then pushed the price up directly.

For this kind of market going forward, I need to be smarter: check the depth before deciding on the execution pace, or better yet, split into smaller orders and enter in batches instead of charging in all at once. If I lose, I’ll treat it as tuition—next time, move slower and wait a few extra seconds for the order book. At least then I can pay less “slippage tax.”