Just unlocked my phone and saw three red dots. I thought some bridge had another incident, but it turns out the group chat was sharing a screenshot of some stablecoin reserves. I stared at it for a long time, zooming in, and then realized it was last year’s audit…

Back to cross-chain bridges, though. A lot of people complain that multisig is troublesome and oracle price feeds are slow, but those dozens of seconds of “waiting for confirmation” are really an escape window the system is leaving itself. No matter how pretty the modular design is, once the bridge layer squeezes its security assumptions into a single link, composability turns into composable risk.

When I go through a new bridge now, I’d rather pay a bit more gas and take the slow route than gamble on “it should be fine this time.” After all, optimism in infrastructure has to be built on the ability to roll back, to be audited, and to be able to curse—rather than blindly charging ahead with your eyes closed.