When the network is congested, I just stare at the mempool in a daze... To put it simply, your transaction isn’t “done once you send it,” but rather queued up among a pile of pending transactions: miners/packagers pick who goes first, and it basically comes down to whether the fee you set is high enough and whether your transaction is more “juicy.” If you set it too low, it gets stuck—at best you end up waiting half a day; at worst, someone else comes in with a higher-fee transaction and pushes yours to the back of the line, or you yourself later send an even more expensive transaction to replace the earlier one (some wallets call it “accelerate/cancel,” but really it’s just fighting for a spot).

What I’m most afraid of isn’t losing money—it’s thinking I’ve authorized/transferred successfully, only to find it stuck in the queue, and then tapping the next step first: permissions, balances, and order all get messed up... Especially recently, with that whole “rewards stacking” setup from staking and shared security being criticized as a nesting-doll scheme, I’m even more hesitant to chain operations when things are congested. I’d rather do one less step, wait for confirmation, and then continue. In any case, my current habit is: when there’s congestion = do less, go slower, and confirm that each step is locked in before moving on.