Crypto bridges are turning into the industry’s next big ticking bomb, just like FTX was before it blew up everything.
Kadan Stadelmann, CTO at Komodo Platform, lays it out plain in his sharp Cointelegraph opinion piece, and honestly, it’s one of the better takes out there, no fluff, just brutal honesty about how we’ve centralized trust in the name of “innovation.”
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Why Bridges Are a Systemic Powder Keg
The core problem? Bridges concentrate risk into a tiny group of validators, custodians, or multisig setups.
They promise seamless cross-chain magic, but in reality, it’s a handful of operators holding the keys to billions. One hack, one bad key, and poof, the whole house of cards collapses.
Stadelmann points out that over $2.8 billion has been drained from bridge exploits historically (figures from pre-2025 reports still hold as the big ones), making up about 40% of all Web3 thefts.
The bad news? That’s not random bad luck. It’s baked in when you slap a decentralized label on centralized choke points.
Vitalik Buterin has called this out for years, it’s centralized infrastructure in disguise. And unfortunately he’s probably right.
Recent Sector Wake-Up Calls We’ve Ignored
Flash back to the big ones. Multichain’s total meltdown left users scrambling, and Ronin got hit for hundreds of millions in one of the largest heists ever.
These aren’t isolated glitches. Every time a bridge fails, it ripples hard, lending markets freeze, liquidity vanishes, DeFi protocols built on wrapped assets start crumbling.
We’ve seen wrapped Bitcoin or Ether on foreign chains treated like the real deal, but they’re just IOUs backed by fragile actors who’ve proven they can (and do) fail.
The industry shrugged after each one, poured more money in, listed more wrapped tokens, chased volume over safety.
It’s like watching someone build a skyscraper on quicksand and cheering the height milestones.
The Broader Picture Isn’t Sunshine Either, Echoes of TradFi Crises and Real-World Parallels
This mess reminds many of 2008’s financial crisis, where bundled subprime mortgages looked diversified until one trigger took down the system. Bridges are similar, they connect chains but create single points of failure that can cascade across the ecosystem.
In gaming, think of centralized servers holding player economies, one hack wipes inventories and trust evaporates.
Or traditional remittances, people used to rely on slow, fee-heavy services like Western Union, but crypto promised better.
Bridges were supposed to deliver that frictionless flow, and that sounds nice. But instead, they’ve introduced new vulnerabilities that could freeze markets overnight.
The scale? Billions in wrapped assets underpin DeFi; a major bridge collapse could trigger liquidations and fear that spreads faster than the hack itself.
What Happens If (When) a Big One Blows
Picture this, a top bridge holding billions in wrapped assets goes down during a bull run peak.
Liquidity props up dozens of protocols disappears. Wrapped BTC markets halt, lending cascades into mass liquidations, traders panic-sell.
It’s FTX-level contagion, but worse because bridges sit at the heart of cross-chain everything.
Best case? We wake up, shift to native trading, real atomic swaps, wallet-to-wallet, no intermediaries. Funds bounce back if a swap fails, no custodian vanishes with the pot.
Worst case? Regulators swoop in, slap heavy rules that kill the spirit, or institutions bail entirely, branding DeFi as duct-tape gimmicks.
Originally, crypto was built to ditch middlemen, trust code over people. We’ve traded that for convenience, and it looks like the rot is spreading.
The Pushback, Or Why the Industry Keeps Doubling Down
Plenty will say bridges are “good enough”. Liquidity is king, UX matters more than perfect security.
Builders prioritize speed, VCs fund the shiny wrappers, exchanges list them for volume.
But Stadelmann’s right, native trading isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, in fact, atomic swaps and hash time-locked contracts have been around forever.
They have limits on depth and ease, sure, but they don’t introduce the same systemic risks. Ignoring the warnings after every exploit is just asking for the next black swan, as Stadelmann says.
So no, bridges aren’t a side issue, they’re embedded into the whole system, growing, and one major failure could set crypto back years.
Kadan’s piece nails it, we need to return to first principles before the market forces the issue. The clock’s ticking.
Disclosure:This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Kriptoworld.com accepts no liability for any errors in the articles or for any financial loss resulting from incorrect information.
Cryptocurrency and Web3 expert, founder of Kriptoworld
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With years of experience covering the blockchain space, András delivers insightful reporting on DeFi, tokenization, altcoins, and crypto regulations shaping the digital economy.
📅 Published: January 20, 2026 • 🕓 Last updated: January 20, 2026
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