Recently, someone asked me again about the differences between IBC / message passing / bridges. Basically: who are you trusting in a cross-chain transfer? IBC is more like "mutual verification according to rules"; you trust the light clients / consensus and the verification logic on both chains. Many bridges are more straightforward: trusting a set of relays / multi-signatures / oracles, plus writing contracts that don't blow up. The more "convenient" the approach, the more trust components become like nested dolls, eventually turning into "I trust they will stay online and not act maliciously"... Hmm. As for the staking / shared security wave, where the benefits stack and get criticized as nested dolls, I can understand that too. Cross-chain is already complicated enough like stacking Jenga, and now there's an extra layer. (I say I won't touch it, but I still click to look at it.) Anyway, my principle is: treat bridges you don't understand as if they might fail; the fewer steps you take, the better.