Ken DiCross

@debificom Three failures, three attack surfaces, one week. Bridge multisig, oracle feed, web interface. Each protocol has a different single-trust-source bolted on, and one is enough to drain it. We're working on designs where the trust surface is smaller and shared, not stacked.

@Fairu_90 @PushChain Right diagnosis. Liquidity is split because every chain has to import balances via a bridge. UX depends on bridges because there's no shared settlement underneath. Solve settlement at the layer below the chains and both problems collapse. That's what we're building.

Where chain abstraction lives matters. Hiding bridges behind nicer UX still ships the bridge risk. Doing it at the settlement layer, where a contract on one chain can call one on another natively, is the version that actually retires the wrapped-token era.

On Wire, assets stay on their native chain. The Universal Transaction Layer coordinates cross-chain calls, but the asset itself never gets wrapped or bridged. Settlement happens where the asset actually lives. That's the design.

The bigger threat surface most protocols miss: the oracle sits behind the same single verification path as the bridge. One compromise, two failure modes, looks like two incidents. Dual-consensus settlement collapses that path. That's the work worth doing.

DeFi is due for stronger architecture. When assets stay on their native chain and ownership transacts under dual-consensus, whole categories of losses stop being architecturally possible. Builders are doing this work.

The reason these hacks are happening is because barely anyone shares Wire’s values. This document is from March 2024. Wire has been building the Universal Transaction Layer since 2020 which is a trustless, bridgeless, universal interoperability technology. Once companies start building with these values, like we have, the hacks plummet. Until then, what we see now will continue.

Better (innovation) is extremely difficult. We had space rockets since the 60s. Elon wanted a reusable one. That took 13 years. Wire Network has spent 6 years creating a tech stack that will significantly improve security and usability in our industry. True innovation takes time. Btw, we are just putting on the final coat of paint on the Universal Transaction Layer but we ship it later this summer. But it’s much more than a transaction layer. It’s security and determinism.

Hyperbridge lost over $2.5M Rhea Finance got hit for $7.6M $9.5M stolen via a fake Ledger Live app CoWSwap over $1M gone That's just THIS WEEK And we're only counting the 7 figure hacks How much has to burn before we demand better?

Many videos of me speaking about this on stage in 2023 and 2024 at DeAI events. It was always inevitable. Open source will always ship their best models. Centralized will turn it into the iPhone. Slightly better camera, little bit bigger battery. Never what it’s capable of. “It’s too powerful and, therefore, dangerous in the hands of the general population.”

Interesting that they are now showing these benchmarks side-by-side with Mythos, to reinforce that you do not have access to the most intelligent model. I always wondered when we'd get here. But we have now for the first time entered the undemocratic era of AI. You are not important enough to have access to the greatest intelligence, and Anthropic wants you to know that.

Most validator rankings are someone's spreadsheet with extra steps. Ours is fully on-chain. No backend, no admin override. You can't game your commission down for a week then jack it back up. The chain remembers. Top performers get stake delegation programmatically.

Another "decentralized" protocol got exploited because one off-chain key controlled minting. No hard caps. No multisig. No rate limits. $100K in, 50M unbacked tokens out. Token hit $0.02. Protocol paused.

AI agents that can operate across every chain without bridges. That's the goal. @AtenKrotos from ZKAGI in the Wire Incubator on what Wire Network makes possible.

@KOREIT_IO @WuBlockchain @WireNetwork It is. We are in a technical industry where most aren’t technical and don’t understand the requirements actually needed for it to function safely and properly.

@KenDicross @WuBlockchain @WireNetwork Ken, is independent thinking really that rare these days? 😌 Bro saw a sensible take and got concerned 😭

Just In: Hackers minted 1 billion DOT tokens on the Ethereum mainnet and then sold them off. According to Certik, the attack was primarily due to a Hyperbridge gateway vulnerability, which allowed attackers to forge messages and manipulate the administrator of a Polkadot token contract on Ethereum, profiting approximately $237k.

@KOREIT_IO @WuBlockchain Is this an anonymous account of one of my devs from @WireNetwork 😂

Bridges fail when minting is based on messages not tied to real locked assets on the source chain. Multi-layer proofs, admin controls and monitoring alone don’t fix that. Security comes from binding asset state, verification, and minting into a single, enforceable system, otherwise you’re validating messages, not value.

Trustless and decentralized systems are going to win. Centralized systems can always get an early advantage cuz they centralize the hard parts and ship product quickly…but you are seeing the inherent flaw they can’t escape from. Dont misinterpret Web2 companies labeling themselves Web3. If it’s not trustless and decentralized it’s not Web3. Simple litmus test.

ZachXBT just dropped receipts on Circle and $420 million in illicit funds not frozen since 2022… But I think many are missing the important message here: The real issue is that centralized stablecoins are fundamentally broken and that we have strayed too far from Web3 ideals Using centralized stablecoins that can be frozen, burned, or wiped at any given time. Seriously? Basically just a CBDC in disguise. What are we doing?!? Anyways, the Drift exploit is the headliner with $285 million in stolen USDC moved through Circle's own CCTP bridge for 6+ hours during US business hours. Easy to see and easy to track and nothing done While the same company froze 16 unrelated business wallets last month for a sealed civil case Instantly with no public explanation 🤨 So the freeze button works. It just works selectively and is controlled by a single entity. Here's what most are missing though Circle isn't just being hypocritical. They're trapped in a lose lose situation. Freeze too much? Centralized dystopia Freeze too little? Enabling crime They freeze when there's clear legal authority Court orders Sealed cases Government pressure But a real-time exploit? That's messy and possibly a liability risk Does that excuse $420 million in inaction? No. But the real issue is that we built an entire ecosystem dependent on centralized gatekeepers and we don’t think twice about it Don’t know about you but thats not the Web3 I signed up for!

Exactly

I've never sen anything more accurate

@DBCrypt0 When blockfi, voyager, and FTX all happened there was a moment. Then people reverted back. This time the technology is there to make it a smooth transition. Next time people feel pain from it the industry will be ready.

I hope you are right. I’m just not as convinced. I see the forces pushing back against a decentralized world and then see how so many play right into their hands. By the time many realize the importance of it and the sacrifices being made, will it be too late? Because for now it seems like we are creating more of a Web2.1 than a Web3.

Vitalik recently said Ethereum hasn't meaningfully improved people's lives The founder. Not a critic. The promise was banking the unbanked and giving people financial sovereignty Instead we got: 🔸 50+ centralized L2s that fragmented liquidity and made VCs and insiders rich 🔸 UX so bad it's cost billions in user losses and scared away mainstream adoption 🔸 A coordination nightmare where moving assets between chains is insecure and requires a roadmap And most of those L2s will die within 2 years because they offer nothing unique and just three L2’s account for 90% of all activity Base alone counts for ~60% So improved? Certainly not. Harmed or rekt? Without a doubt Now some will point to the wins 3,000 ecosystem developers $160B in stablecoins (all centralized) The largest DeFi ecosystem But the numbers aren’t anything to celebrate so don’t let them fool you… 3k devs sounds impressive until you realize Meta alone has 26,000 engineers. Google has over 70k. A single Web2 company has 8x the developer firepower of the entire Ethereum ecosystem! Not just Ethereum alone because that’s only ~180 devs. The entire ecosystem! Also $160B in stablecoins may sound like a lot but it's a rounding error in global finance And most of it sits in centralized DeFi or CEX wallets, certainly not with the unbanked Let’s not forget it’s also entirely controlled by centralized entities that can freeze, burn, or wipe at any given time. So much for those Web3 ideals 🤨 And before anyone says I'm just hating, this isn't about Ethereum versus other chains This is about what we're building FOR and the entire point of Web3 Clearly something many have forgotten since I had two people in my comments this morning arguing decentralization isn’t that important. What are we even doing here if that’s the case?!?