Just saw a transaction get stuck in the mempool for almost half an hour. The nonce wasn’t messed up, and I even kept bumping the gas, but it just wouldn’t get confirmed. Honestly, at times like this, I’d rather pause first instead of rushing to add gas. When the network is congested, it’s the node distribution and miner ordering that matter most. I usually check whether there are lots of transactions with the same nonce competing in the current pending pool, or whether some mining pool is doing a reorg. Anyway, I’ll run through the process first and then decide whether to speed it up—so I don’t impulsively hit “urgent” and end up getting liquidated.

When the funding rates got extremely wild recently, the group chat was loud—some people said a reversal was coming, others said to keep squeezing the bubble. I was also pretty nervous, but I’m used to hitting the pause button first and then watching on-chain data: whether whales are withdrawing or adding positions, and whether node distribution has skewed. To put it simply, the benefit of good process control is that no matter how anxious you are, your actions won’t get messy. Like last time—I almost chased a higher price on the perp contract. Then I checked the congestion situation in the mempool, saw a bunch of people competing to buy, and I ended up waiting instead. I avoided a lot of losses. Yeah, maybe that’s my “pause button” philosophy.