I was just watching the mempool for a while, feeling like rush hour on the subway: I clearly clicked send on my swap, but in the queue, someone cut in line, and miners (oh, now they call them block proposers) kept picking and choosing. During congestion, slippage feels like a sudden off-rhyme in my rap—originally wanting a clean price, but ending up stuck in the middle, and the transaction completes in a flash with only "settling."

What's more annoying is thinking you're negotiating with an AMM, but actually you're bargaining with a bunch of seat grabbers: paying a higher gas fee might get you faster, but it could just turn you into someone else's counterparty later... Anyway, now I always take a quick look at the pool depth before confirming, to avoid reckless trading during high volatility.

Recently, there's been talk about adding taxes or tightening/loosening compliance in certain areas—basically, deposit and withdrawal expectations fluctuate wave after wave, and on-chain congestion also swings with the market sentiment; when people get anxious, the mempool becomes even more like a busy market. That's it for now, I won't fight it today.