{"id":60857,"date":"2026-06-21T22:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T14:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nightfame.com\/style\/?p=60857"},"modified":"2026-06-21T23:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:05:16","slug":"chapter-3-the-gas-auction-the-front-running-fencer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nightfame.com\/style\/chapter-3-the-gas-auction-the-front-running-fencer\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 3: The Gas Auction – The Front-Running Fencer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse didn’t sleep well again, but this time it wasn’t because he was angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was because his brain wouldn’t stop turning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying everything Nia had shown him in the library. The mempool. The transparent waiting room. The way validators sorted transactions by gas fee instead of arrival time. The Seeker watching, waiting, always ready to jump ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one question kept circling back, again and again, like a song stuck on repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if I just pay more?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seemed so obvious. The Seeker outbid him because it offered a higher gas fee. Fine. Then Jesse would offer an even higher fee. Then the Seeker would have to pay more. Eventually, one of them would run out of money, and Jesse was pretty sure the bot’s owners had deeper pockets than a seventeen-year-old game store employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But maybe\u2014just maybe\u2014he could win once. Just once. For Emberheart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2 AM, he had a plan. A stupid plan, maybe. But a plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He grabbed his phone and typed out a message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse:<\/strong> What if I just pay more gas than The Seeker?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn’t expect an answer until morning. But his phone buzzed thirty seconds later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia:<\/strong> It’s 2 AM.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse:<\/strong> I know. I can’t sleep.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia:<\/strong> Neither can I. Validator maintenance. And no, paying more gas won’t work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse:<\/strong> Why not?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia:<\/strong> Because it’s not a one-time duel. It’s an auction. And you will lose every auction against a bot.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse:<\/strong> But what if I bid really high? Like, higher than it expects?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia:<\/strong> Come over tomorrow. I’ll show you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse:<\/strong> Where do you live?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia:<\/strong> I’ll send the address. Bring your laptop. And coffee.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She sent an address across town\u2014an apartment building near the university. Jesse stared at the message for a long time, then finally put down his phone and closed his eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He dreamed of swords. Glowing red swords, floating in a dark room. Every time he reached for one, it moved farther away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The apartment building was older than Jesse expected\u2014brick walls, fire escapes zigzagging down the front, a front door that stuck halfway open. He buzzed apartment 4B, and Nia’s voice crackled through the speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Come up. Third floor. The elevator doesn’t work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stairwell smelled like someone had been cooking fish three days ago and never opened a window. Jesse climbed past graffiti on the walls\u2014tags he didn’t recognize, plus a surprisingly detailed drawing of a cat wearing a wizard hat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apartment 4B had a door that looked like it had been reinforced with extra locks. Jesse knocked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia opened it, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure he was in the right place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind her, spread across a small living room, was what Jesse could only describe as a validator cave<\/em>. Three mini computers sat stacked on a wire shelf in the corner, each one covered in blinking LEDs\u2014green, blue, red\u2014and connected by a rat’s nest of cables. A large monitor on a folding table showed dashboards with scrolling numbers. The walls were covered in sticky notes\u2014pink, yellow, green\u2014each one scribbled with code snippets, network addresses, and what looked like hand-drawn diagrams of blocks and transactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh,” Jesse said. “You really run a validator.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What did you think? That I was lying?” Nia was already walking back to her desk, her messy bun somehow messier than yesterday. She was wearing the same hoodie. Probably the same energy drink in her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I thought you meant you helped someone else run it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I help my brother run it. He’s at college. I’m the boots on the ground.” She pointed to the three mini computers. “Those are our nodes. They process transactions, build blocks, vote on consensus. Also they heat the apartment, so we save on heating bills.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse stepped inside, careful not to trip over any cables. The apartment was small\u2014a living room, a kitchenette, a hallway that probably led to a bedroom. But the validator setup took up most of the space, humming quietly like a mechanical beehive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your brother just left you in charge of this?” Jesse asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He didn’t leave me in charge. He left me with the responsibility and none of the authority.” Nia grabbed a second chair from the kitchen and dragged it over to her desk. “Sit. I’m going to show you why your plan is doomed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jesse sat. Nia pulled up a program on her monitor\u2014not the simple mempool viewer from the library, but a professional dashboard that showed real-time data from the network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Okay,” she said. “You want to beat The Seeker by paying a higher gas fee. Let’s run a simulation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She typed a few commands. The dashboard changed to show a test environment\u2014a fake sale for a cheap artifact called “Training Sword,” priced at 2 credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’ve set up a sandbox,” Nia explained. “It’s a test network that mimics the real one. No real money involved. We’re going to run your purchase through the same conditions as the Emberheart sale. Watch.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She handed Jesse the keyboard. “Submit a transaction to buy the Training Sword. Set your gas fee at 1 credit.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse typed. Clicked submit. The transaction appeared in the test mempool as a small green dot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Now we wait,” Nia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn’t wait long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within two seconds, another transaction appeared\u2014same purchase, same 2-credit price, but with a gas fee of 1.1 credits. The label on the dashboard read: SIM_SEEKER_01<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s copying you,” Jesse said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s outbidding you,” Nia corrected. “Now raise your fee.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse adjusted his transaction. Gas fee: 1.5 credits. He resubmitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dashboard updated. SIM_SEEKER_01<\/em> responded with 1.6 credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse raised to 2.0. The Seeker raised to 2.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse raised to 2.5. The Seeker raised to 2.6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“See the pattern?” Nia asked. “It always beats you by exactly 0.1 credits. Enough to jump ahead, not so much that it wastes money.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse stared at the screen. The bids were climbing. His heart was climbing too\u2014a weird adrenaline rush, even though he knew this was fake money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What if I jump straight to 5.0?” he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Do it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse typed. Submitted. Gas fee: 5.0 credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Seeker responded: 5.1 credits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse slammed his palm on the desk. The mini computers hummed on, indifferent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It always beats you,” Nia said quietly. “It’s programmed to. You’re a human with one transaction and a limited budget. The Seeker is a machine with thousands of transactions and a budget the size of a small country. You cannot win a gas auction. Not ever.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jesse leaned back in his chair. The sticky notes on the wall seemed to blur together. He felt stupid. Of course you couldn’t beat a bot at a bidding war. Bots were built for this. They had no emotions, no hesitation, no moment of “is this really worth it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he had to ask one more question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What if I bid higher than the artifact is worth? Like, way higher. So high that The Seeker’s owners would lose money if they matched it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia nodded slowly. “You’re thinking like a strategist. I like it. But here’s the problem.” She pulled up a different view on her dashboard\u2014a historical chart of gas fees from the past month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Gas fees on this network average between 0.5 and 2 credits for a simple purchase. If you bid 10 credits, you’re paying ten times the normal rate. The Seeker’s maximum bid is probably around 3 or 4 credits\u2014whatever keeps the purchase profitable after resale. So yes, you could outbid it by going above its maximum.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Then why doesn’t everyone do that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because you’d be paying 10 credits for a sword that’s worth 2 credits.” Nia turned to face him. “Congratulations, you beat The Seeker. And you lost ten credits instead of fifty. You still lose.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse opened his mouth. Closed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Seeker doesn’t care about winning one auction,” Nia continued. “It does this thousands of times a day. If it loses a few because someone overpays, that’s fine. It wins the other 99.9% of the time. You, on the other hand, only have enough credits for maybe two or three overpays before you’re broke.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So the game is rigged.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The game is designed<\/em>,” Nia said. “It’s designed to reward whoever can pay the highest fee, fastest, most consistently. That’s never going to be a human.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jesse stood up. Walked over to the validator nodes. The blinking lights were hypnotic. He thought about all the people who had lost to The Seeker\u2014not just him, but the dozens of people whose forum posts he’d read. People who had saved up for months, just like him. People who had clicked “submit” with shaking hands, believing they had a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn’t have a chance. None of them did. They just didn’t know it yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So that’s it?” he said, not turning around. “I just\u2026 stop buying things? Stop collecting? Let the bots have everything?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was different. Softer. “My brother and I started this validator pool because we believed in the network. We thought it would be a fair system\u2014everyone equal, everyone transparent. But the more I learned, the more I realized that fairness isn’t automatic. You have to build it. And no one has.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She stood up and walked to the whiteboard mounted on her wall\u2014smaller than the library’s, but covered in dense diagrams. “I’ve been working on ideas. Ways to change the rules so that the gas auction doesn’t matter. But every time I think I’ve found something, I realize the bots would just adapt.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse turned around. “What kind of ideas?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Different ordering mechanisms. Instead of sorting by gas fee, you sort by a random number. Or by a combination of arrival time and something else. Or you hide the transactions entirely so bots can’t see them until it’s too late.” She erased a corner of the whiteboard and drew a quick diagram. “But every solution has a trade-off. Random ordering is fair, but it’s slow. Hiding transactions requires encryption, which adds complexity. And complexity means bugs, and bugs mean exploits.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse stared at the diagram. It looked like a maze\u2014arrows pointing in different directions, boxes labeled PROS<\/em> and CONS<\/em>, question marks everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is what you’ve been working on?” he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Late nights. Energy drinks. Occasional crying.” Nia shrugged. “My brother doesn’t know. He thinks I just run the nodes and collect the fees. But I’ve been trying to figure out a way out of this mess.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia looked at him. For a moment, she looked younger than sixteen\u2014tired and frustrated and maybe a little bit scared. “Because I don’t want to spend my whole life helping bots steal from people. I got into this to build something fair. Not to become part of the problem.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jesse walked back to the desk. Sat down. Looked at the dashboard, still showing the simulated auction. The Seeker’s last bid\u20145.1 credits\u2014glowed on the screen like a taunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You said you’ve been working on ideas,” Jesse said. “But you also said none of them work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“None of them work alone<\/em>,” Nia corrected. “But maybe together? I don’t know. I’m one person. I run three nodes in my brother’s apartment. I’m not a cryptography professor. I’m just a kid who taught herself to code so she could help keep the lights on.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesse was quiet for a moment. Then he pointed to the whiteboard. “Teach me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Teach you what?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Teach me what you know. The mempool, the validators, the ordering mechanisms. All of it.” He turned to face her. “You said you don’t have anyone to work with. Now you do. Two brains are better than one. And I’m not a coder, but I’m good at systems. I play strategy games. I think about rules and counters and exploits.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia stared at him. Then she laughed\u2014a short, surprised laugh. “You want to help me redesign transaction ordering?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I want to buy my sword,” Jesse said. “And I want everyone else to be able to buy theirs too. Without getting robbed by a bot.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nia picked up a marker from her desk. She walked to the whiteboard and wrote in big letters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GAS AUCTION: WHY IT’S UNWINNABLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underneath, she started listing bullet points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n