Today I was looking at the components of IBC/message passing/bridges again. My brain is a bit tired but still going... To put it simply, a cross-chain transfer isn't just "send a packet and it arrives." You're actually trusting: the source chain won't rollback, the light client/validator set won't act up, the relayer won't drop packets randomly, the destination chain won't replay the transaction, and that timeout/ordering logic won't be broken. Bridges are even more straightforward: each additional layer—multisig/oracle/relayer/contract—adds another layer of trust. No matter how attractive the returns, you need to adjust the risk frequency so it's not too harsh.

By the way, I want to complain that recently, labels on on-chain data tools are said to be lagging or misleading. Now I don't even trust the labels on cross-chain address data. I'd rather sample and verify a few transaction paths myself—slower, but more reassuring.