- Direct-chain storage offers some protection against 51-percent assaults.
- Cross-chain bridges do not have the same degree of security.
For blockchain technology, interoperability aids in the issue of assets and data interconnecting across chains. Data and value exchange between two parties using the same blockchain platform, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum, has become easy. However, the same cannot be stated for data and value exchange between two parties using different blockchain platforms.
As a result, the digital transfer becomes much more difficult due to the expanding diversity of blockchain networks used by enterprises throughout the globe. It is expected that interoperability would help to relieve these issues and make it easier for parties to trade across different blockchains.
Future of Multi-chain Ecosystems
When Vitalik Buterin tweeted a link to a Reddit article this morning, he spoke about the future of multi-chain ecosystems and raised reservations about cross-chain ecosystems.
My argument for why the future will be *multi-chain*, but it will not be *cross-chain*: there are fundamental limits to the security of bridges that hop across multiple "zones of sovereignty". From https://t.co/3g1GUvuA3A: pic.twitter.com/tEYz8vb59b
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 7, 2022
According to Buterin’s reasoning, the “fundamental security limits of bridges” are what make cross-chain interactions problematic. For Buterin, direct-chain storage (e.g., Ethereum, Solana) offers some protection against 51-percent assaults. There is no way that hackers can propose blocks that would take away a person’s crypto even if they can censor or reverse the transactions.
On the other hand, Cross-chain bridges do not have the same degree of security, according to Buterin. If an attacker deposits their ETH onto a Solana (SOL) bridge to obtain Solana-wrapped Ether (WETH) and then reverts that transaction on the Ethereum side. As soon as the Solana (SOL) side confirms it, it will cause catastrophic losses on other participants for whom the coins are locked in the SOL-WETH contract, as the wrapped tokens are no longer backed by the initial on a 1:1 ratio.
