I just saw a post about a cross-chain bridge talking about IBC, and my first reaction was to hit the pause button before thinking further.

Others think “cross-chain” just means clicking to send a transfer and waiting a few minutes for it to arrive. But in reality, don’t you have to trust the validator set’s state consistency, whether the relayer’s message passing is complete, and whether the light client’s verification logic has any loopholes… basically, every layer is a little black box.

With recent tightening of compliance, the channels for in-and-out funding have gotten narrower, which makes people even more sensitive to the trust model of these bridges. Anyway, every time I use IBC, I take extra looks at the other chain’s node distribution and how much data latency there is—otherwise I just don’t feel secure.

Not sure if it’s just me being too anxious, but being more process-controlled is better than panicking after something goes wrong. That’s it.