Cross-Chain Bridge Risk Assessor
Assess a cross-chain bridge on its trust model, the value it secures against the cost of compromising it, message verification and operations, and name what you are actually trusting.
Last reviewed by the Radiatus Cloud team
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Every bridge has a trust assumption and most users cannot state it
Moving an asset between chains means something attests that a deposit happened on one chain so that an asset can be issued on another. That something is either the consensus of the source chain, verified directly, or a committee whose signatures are trusted. These are very different, and the marketing rarely distinguishes them. If you cannot say who would have to be compromised for your funds to be taken, you are trusting something you have not examined, and the losses in this category have come overwhelmingly from the part nobody examined.
The security model inverts when the locked value exceeds the cost of attack
A bridge secured by a five-of-nine multisig is secured by five keys, whatever the accompanying language says. When the value locked exceeds what it would cost to obtain five keys, through compromise, coercion or purchase, the only thing preventing an attack is that nobody has undertaken it yet. This ratio moves as deposits grow, so a bridge that was reasonably secured at launch becomes unreasonably secured by success alone, without anything about it changing.
Verifying the message is not the same as verifying its origin
Several of the largest bridge losses came from accepting a message that was cryptographically valid but did not come from where the contract assumed. A proof of a real event on the wrong contract, or on the wrong chain, or replayed from earlier, verifies perfectly and mints assets that are not backed by anything. Binding the message to its source chain, its source contract and a nonce is what closes it, and it is the part that gets missed because the signature check looks like the whole job.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core question about any bridge?
Who or what would have to be compromised for your funds to be taken. If you cannot state it precisely, you are trusting something you have not examined.
What does a five-of-nine multisig bridge mean?
That the bridge is secured by five keys. Compare the cost of obtaining five keys against the value locked; when the value exceeds the cost, the only thing preventing an attack is that nobody has attempted it.
Why does message origin matter separately from validity?
Because a cryptographically valid proof of a real event on the wrong contract or the wrong chain still verifies, and mints assets backed by nothing. Several of the largest losses worked exactly this way.
Do transfer caps help?
Yes, materially. They convert a total loss into a partial one and create the time in which a pause can happen at all, since bridge exploits drain in minutes.
What happens to my wrapped asset if the bridge fails?
It becomes an unredeemable claim. A wrapped token is a claim on the bridge rather than on the origin asset, and the health of the origin asset is irrelevant to that.
Privacy & Security
Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
How to Use
Tick what you have verified to score the bridge.
Disclaimer: This tool is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Results are for educational and utility purposes.