The Internet is only as good as its weakest link, and it’s clear that Web3’s weakest link has become the bridge. Chainanalysis estimates that there have been $2 billion in bridging attacks over the last year, and that type of attack is now by far the most popular method of stealing cryptocurrency.

Traditional Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 had their open port scanning and “man in the middle” attacks, and Web3 has the bridging, which is one of the only ways thousands of separate blockchains communicate with each other and they are interoperable. As currently built, blockchains would be virtually useless, locked in their own utility silos, without bridges providing an interoperability protocol to allow interaction between ledgers.

Although bridges have been a vital component for building inter-blockchain links, just as vital as HTTP was for linking web pages across different browsers and computers, bridges are essentially a halfway makeshift measure for connecting the mess of chains. of blocks and protocols that have proliferated. in the 14 years since Satoshi’s white paper. It’s one more way that blockchains are entangled in this kind of legacy Tower of Babel that makes it difficult for these technologies to truly usher in a new era of decentralization.

Legacy Foundation, Legacy Problems

Here we have the current fundamental problem of Web3, more of a “Web2.5” that has decentralized internet layers on top of layers of legacy infrastructure that is both centralized and insecure. Web3 is repeating the patterns of development that allowed the Internet to become a consumerized and ultimately incomplete advance of human progress.

It is a system that is difficult to escape from even for the most “decentralized” technologies. While bridging is having a moment as the quick, dirty, and popular way to hack blockchains and Web3, there are multiple entry points where cybercriminals can compromise the seemingly impenetrable technologies of encrypted blockchains.

Much of the blockchain infrastructure runs on centralized services, from the point of view of Internet service providers to cloud services, proprietary software running simultaneously on hardware, and the hardware itself. Inbound and outbound traffic is at some point forced to pass through one of the few technology oligopolies that run the modern Internet.

As Amazon.com Inc. itself proudly promotes on the Amazon Web Services information page, 25% of all Ethereum workloads in the world run on AWS. What about that? The largest company on the planet is proud of its contributions to decentralization.

Not to mention, almost every computing machine on that very planet is subject to the original sin of faulty design. The Specter and Meltdown hardware vulnerabilities, disclosed in early 2018, targeted almost every computer chip made in the last 20 years, whether that chip ended up in a server rack, a personal computer, a smartphone. , a tablet or, yes, cryptocurrency and peer miners. -a-peer “nodes”.

Although Web3 is up to the challenge of replacing centralized brand trust with the great promise of decentralization, it will take time to decentralize networks, Internet service, cloud, and all the current parts of Internet infrastructure that have been constructed. during the last decades. However, there are more tangible steps we can take to better protect Web3 against the immediate threat of bridging attacks that undermine the fundamental security of today’s ecosystem.

bridges to nowhere

In building an ecosystem around the simple and enticing promise of the Satoshi and bitcoin white paper, perhaps we have lost sight of what made that promise so attractive in the first place: the promise of unbreakable peer-to-peer transactions and private keys. .

Bridges and oracles have been an essential, but ultimately transitory and definitely insecure means for these different blockchains to function and have utility outside of their native environments. We have traded convenience for fundamental added value, especially as these technologies have enabled the rampant theft of value from both individuals and the community to the tune of billions of dollars.

For Web3 to succeed, and not just become a pale imitation of the poorly built websites that came before it, we need better interoperability solutions that incorporate the fundamentals of a private, secure, and decentralized blockchain. That means interoperability solutions that enable things like trustless self-validation and wallets that are both open source and universal. Bridges have become so attractive as a target that they should no longer be accepted by the community.

We may not be able to replace all those centralized Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 pieces that we still need to make Web3 work, but by building an interoperability foundation that doesn’t create the weakest link in the blockchain, it will be a great first time. step forward to shore up what is clearly Web3’s biggest weakness at the moment.

Ken DiCross is the co-founder and CEO of the Wire.Network blockchain platform. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: Peter H/Pixabay