During the past week, a Base protocol began auctioning off the privilege to step in front of your transactions. Ultimately, you will still end up receiving a less favorable price for your trade. The only real change is that this worse rate is now handed to you by the winner of the auction, rather than by an arbitrary automated bot. To protect yourself from this, you can rely on private execution. This method keeps your order entirely concealed right up until it finalizes and settles, guaranteeing that absolutely no one has the opportunity to cut in line ahead of you.