Recently everyone has been criticizing validators for eating MEV and for unfair ordering, and yes, it’s annoying—but let’s be blunt: you should get past the “wallet part” before talking about anything else.

Your assets are still not that big (as long as you’re okay with losing them and treating it as tuition), and a hardware wallet is enough—at least don’t leave your private keys exposed on computers or phones in the clear. Once your assets are a bit larger and you frequently interact with DeFi/NFTs, multi-signature setups really make life easier: split permissions so that if you accidentally sign something or get phished, you won’t end up with everything wiped in one go. It may mean more signature requests and higher gas fees, but it’s still manageable.

Going even further—if your family members/partners can cooperate—social recovery is quite appealing: losing a device won’t mean an immediate GG, but choosing the wrong “guardian” can be pretty catastrophic… Anyway, my principle is kind of old-school: if a problem can be solved with a process, don’t gamble on luck; if using L2 can save gas, don’t stubbornly fight it on the mainnet. That’s it for now.