Blockchain Bridges: Interoperability's Soft Spot?
566m USD is not a light hack. That is the worth of BNB that was stolen in yesterday's hack of a bridge between Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain.
When the losses were around 100 USD, BSC got halted, to deal with the situation. The rapid response raised more critiques about the centralization of the chain. Only part of the funds has been recovered so far.
The interoperability of blockchains is paramount for moving the crypto sphere to another level. But at the same time, bridges between blockchains are favorite targets of hackers, and, apparently, quite easy ones.
In an August report by Chainalysis, looks like 69% of all crypto hacks since 2021 happened on blockchain bridges.
The question is, knowing that bridges are more vulnerable and that we need them to develop the crypto industry, what are the solutions?
I read an article a while ago. I only remember bits and pieces of it, without details, and I wouldn't know what to search for to find it again.
The article announced that a blockchain (can't remember which one) will start working on support for the IBC bridge (i.e. Inter-Blockchain Communication, the official bridge of the Cosmos ecosystem), without running the Cosmos SDK as well, but on a different blockchain.
What did they want to emphasize? That there are blockchains out there that will be using Cosmos for its bridge, without changing the core software that drives them. For example, an EVM chain remains an EVM chain but connects to any of the Cosmos ecosystem blockchains via IBC.
Why did they say this happens? Because IBC was reliable and never got hacked. This is obviously advertising, but I believe this is a piece of information that is verifiable, so they wouldn't say that if it wasn't true. Hopefully.
Assuming the statement is true, the question is: Did IBC remain unhacked because there are lower-hanging fruits out there easier to hack and potentially more "profitable"? That is a good possibility, with most of the hacks that get the spotlight happening on EVM chains.
But if IBC really is a more secure bridge, maybe there's something to learn from them.
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