Explaining crypto's billion-dollar bridge problem

Earlier DU thread: Hackers Steal $540 Million in Crypto From 'Axie Infinity' Game

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Source: The Verge

EXPLAINING CRYPTO’S BILLION-DOLLAR BRIDGE PROBLEM

What are blockchain bridges, why do they keep getting hacked, and can we ever stop it from happening?

By Corin Faife@corintxt Apr 11, 2022, 8:00am EDT

On March 23rd, the Ronin blockchain network underlying the popular NFT-driven game Axie Infinity was hit with a hack that saw the attackers walk away with an eye-popping $625 million in cryptocurrency.

The Ronin hack was the largest amount of money that had ever been stolen from the type of service called a “bridge,” which connects one blockchain to another so that value can be sent between them. Unfortunately, it was far from the only hack to hit a bridge: less than two months previously, another bridge platform called Wormhole was exploited for close to $325 million, and about six months before that, more than $600 million was stolen from another cross-chain bridge called Poly. (In a surprising twist, the hacker later returned Poly’s stolen funds.)

In short, bridges are the weak point in a lot of cryptocurrency systems, and hackers are targeting them for more than $1 billion in little over a year. So it’s worth laying out exactly what they are, why they’re important, and how crypto companies can try to plug the billion-dollar hole in their pockets.

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SO WHAT IS A “BLOCKCHAIN BRIDGE”?

Essentially, it’s a system for connecting different blockchains, allowing users to exchange one kind of coin or token for another. ...

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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/23017107/crypto-billion-dollar-bridge-hack-decentralized-finance