Paper says most cross-chain bridge losses repeat known posture failures
Original title: Lessons Not Learned: Why Cross-Chain Bridges Keep Losing Billions the Same Way
Authors say posture failures caused 88% of reported bridge losses since 2023 and claim their rubric would have cut losses from $3.52B to $33M.
A catalogue of cross-chain bridge hacks from 2021 to 2026 finds that security-posture failures, not code bugs, drive most losses and largely repeat earlier mistakes. Code audits miss these issues, so the authors propose an on-chain scoring rubric with a hard cap when a fatal risk is present. An analyzer and an agentic checker apply the rubric to live deployments. The authors also argue rate limits and an emergency stop bound unanticipated losses.
Unconfirmed: The 105-fold reduction is the authors' estimate from applying the rubric, not an independent measurement.
- Posture failures account for 88% of reported losses since 2023.
- A hard cap sets the score to its lowest value when a fatal risk is present.
- A shared backing means a token is only as safe as its weakest deployment.
- The authors' analyzer monitors deployed bridges for changes.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgBridge hacks have cost billions, often without exploiting a code bug. In the cross-chain bridge hacks we catalogue from 2021 to 2026, failures of security posture, meaning how a bridge's people, code, controls and off-chain infrastructure are set up, account for 88% of reported losses since 2023, and nearly all repeat earlier failures.
By Mohsen Ahmadvand · arxiv.org
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