The network has been congested again these days, so I’ve been watching the mempool to see how my transaction is “queuing.”

To be clear, when you send it out, it doesn’t get on the chain immediately; it first goes into the waiting room: nodes hold it first, and miners/block producers will prioritize those with higher fees and more stable execution to include in the block.
If you set the fee too low, you’ll just wait patiently, and after waiting, you might even get pushed out;
What’s more annoying is when you encounter transactions with the same nonce—your subsequent transaction, no matter how urgent, can only be stuck, like being blocked by the previous vehicle.
Anyway, when I see congestion, I first check the nonce, then make sure the gas limit isn’t too tight—better to be slow than to fail and waste gas.

My colleague is still explaining each candlestick with ETF fund flows and US stock sentiment, and I just listen… fine, but what I care more about is: when there’s congestion, did your “buy/sell” actually get into a block, and if so, which block number?
Those are the only things on-chain that can be verified.