**When Your Crypto Transaction Gets Cut in Line: Understanding Front Running**

Ever wonder why your transaction got stuck in the mempool while someone else's sailed through? That's front running at work, and it's one of the trickiest games being played on blockchain networks right now.

**How the Queue Jumpers Play the Game**

Front running happens when someone—usually a miner or bot operator—knows about your pending transaction and deliberately places their own transaction ahead of it. They're not just guessing; they literally see your transaction waiting to be validated and decide to beat you to it.

Here's the play-by-play: You submit a transaction to the network with a modest gas fee, thinking that's enough. But someone else spots it in the mempool, realizes what you're about to do, and immediately sends an identical or similar transaction with a higher gas fee attached. Since the network prioritizes higher fees, their transaction gets processed first. You end up waiting longer, paying for nothing, or watching your transaction fail entirely.

**Why Miners and Bots Care About Front Running Crypto**

The people doing this aren't doing it for fun—there's serious money involved. A miner or bot operator who successfully front runs knows exactly how much profit they can extract. They might:

- Execute a trade before yours and profit from the price movement your transaction would have caused
- Sandwich your transaction between theirs to capture the spread
- Liquidate positions before the network knows it's happening

All while you're left watching your transaction get delayed because your gas fee suddenly seems pathetically low.

**The Real Cost to Regular Users**

This is where it gets frustrating for everyday traders. When blockchain networks get congested, front running crypto activity gets worse. Users with modest gas fees experience real delays. Your transaction that should have gone through in seconds gets stuck. Sometimes it never goes through at all, and you've wasted gas fees for nothing.

The blockchain was supposed to be transparent and fair. But when bots and miners can see your move before you make it and have the power to reorder the queue, that fairness disappears pretty fast.

**What This Means for the Future**

As blockchain adoption grows, front running remains one of the ugliest sides of how these networks actually work. It's not necessarily illegal, but it sure feels unfair when you're on the receiving end of it. Until networks find better solutions to prevent transaction visibility before execution, front running will keep being a profitable game for those who can see the board first.