Lately I've been looking at cross-chain bridges again, and the more I look, the more I think that the words "waiting for confirmation" are quite valuable.

Many people complain about the slow speed, but actually they are giving some buffer for multi-signature and oracle errors, especially for bridges with a bunch of signers that rely on external price feeds/status updates.
Honestly, any malfunction in any link could send your assets away.

Seeing the complaints about the layered staking and shared security setups, I can understand. The compounded yields look attractive, but if the underlying security is borrowed, then a "middleman" like a cross-chain bridge can amplify the risk if something goes wrong.
Anyway, I now prefer to make fewer transfers when bridging, try small amounts first, wait if I can, and don't take "speed" as the default setting.