Recently, the group has been talking about block builders, bundles, and it feels like new users get a headache just hearing about it. To put it simply, retail investors only need to know this: the transaction you send out may not be "queued for on-chain inclusion"; it could be bundled, front-run, or even combined with others' orders and inserted together. The slippage and transaction order you see are sometimes not due to your speed but just how the rules are.

Going a bit deeper, I think there's no need to obsess over who is on the builder list or gossip about who is malicious… unless you're doing arbitrage yourself. Ordinary people can only do so much: avoid large amounts trading during low liquidity, be less impulsive about chasing prices, and use reliable wallets for routing/private broadcasting (but don’t blindly believe that “private = absolutely safe”).

By the way, the recent disputes over privacy coins/mixing coins and their compliance boundaries are quite intense, making it seem like “not taking sides means you're not pure.” Anyway, my mindset is: tools are just tools, and on-chain liquidity can be manipulated by others. Knowing how they might manipulate you already puts you ahead of the game. That’s all for now.