Why does moving assets across chains still take minutes and carry unknown risk?

Six years after the first cross-chain bridges launched, users still face unpredictable costs, complex failure modes, and security trade-offs that no protocol resolves simultaneously. In June 2025 Force Bridge on the Nervos Network was exploited for over three million dollars, continuing a pattern of bridge hacks that have collectively drained billions since 2021. Most bridges rely on small validator sets or multisigs that represent a single point of failure, and pool imbalances create slippage for large transfers with no recourse. Cross-chain protocols now represent 57 percent of total interoperability revenue in 2025, but that concentration reflects lock-in, not solved usability, and the triangle of security, speed, and decentralization remains unresolved for any bridge serving real user volumes.