Today, watching the mempool queue feels a bit like monitoring the volatility curve of options... You think clicking send is the end of it, but actually the transaction is just waiting in the "waiting room": first broadcasted by the local wallet, then picked up by nodes into the pool, miners/validators choose which to include, mainly based on how attractive the fee is. During congestion, your transaction might stay stuck as pending, or even get bumped by a later transaction with the same nonce (speeding up/canceling is essentially just paying a higher fee with the same nonce to get a better spot).

I just did something stupid: tried to raise the gas a little, but the base fee jumped again, and this 0x7a…c3 transaction got stuck in the pool like it's dead. A few minutes later, I still see someone using a higher tip to cut in line. Basically, mempool doesn’t follow FIFO; it’s about “who’s willing to pay more.” By the way, it’s normal that recent on-chain data tools and address labels are lagging behind; what you see as “smart money” moves might have been queued or replaced several times already... Anyway, during congestion, I prefer to do less, and if I really need to move, I pay enough fees in one go to avoid fighting with myself.