Recently, someone asked me again: what's the real difference between IBC, message passing, and various bridges... I think about it as "Who do you really trust when crossing chains?" Basically, you first trust that both chains themselves won't roll back or go offline, then trust the relayer to help transfer the packet, then trust that the proof system verifying that message won't go awry, and finally, you have to trust that the on-chain contract/module didn't just blindly mint tokens upon receiving the message. Many incidents aren't due to math proofs being flawed, but because one link in the chain is too careless: permissions are opened haphazardly, upgrades aren't monitored, emergency switches are essentially useless. Recently, AI Agents (automated on-chain interaction bots) are very popular, but no matter how smart the bots are, they only follow authorized commands. Once you give unlimited permissions to a contract that "automates your trades," and the bridge does some tricks... it can get pretty ugly. Anyway, before I cross chains myself, I always take a second look: Is it using light client verification, is there multi-signature backup, can I revoke permissions at any time? I’d rather be slow than take shortcuts.