I just saw someone talking about cross-chain bridges again, asking "What exactly are we waiting for in the confirmation," so I’ll share a few thoughts as well. Basically, a bridge is just translating the state from one chain to another. You either trust a group of people (multi-signature), trust a data feeding system (oracle), or trust both a little. The biggest risk with multi-signature isn’t “slowness,” but that signing authority is too centralized, or someone temporarily adds or removes signers without notice; with oracles, it’s that once they say your funds have arrived, they really have, and if they get blocked mid-process, the bridge can easily turn into a withdrawal machine.

So “waiting for confirmation” isn’t some mystical thing; it’s waiting for the result on that chain to be less susceptible to rollback or reorganization, especially during mainnet upgrades, hard forks, or maintenance where nodes are down. It’s really uncertain which fork will be considered the official history. Recently, people are speculating whether ecosystem projects will migrate, but I’m more concerned about whether the bridge is secretly adjusting parameters or changing thresholds during these windows… My own habit is to avoid bridging before and after upgrades as much as possible. If I do bridge, I prefer to do it slowly, wait for multiple confirmations, to avoid waking up and finding I’ve been “settled” on another chain.