Tonight I looked at some IBC / cross-chain messaging stuff, and my eyes are a bit sore… The more I look, the more I feel that “one-time cross-chain” is actually packaging a series of trust: the source chain doesn’t roll back itself, the light client / validator set doesn’t cause trouble, the relayer is just running errands but also fears getting stuck; switching to a bridge makes it even more straightforward, either trusting a multi-signature / escrow setup, trusting an oracle + validation network, or trusting your misunderstood upgrade permissions. Modularization + DA layer development is very exciting for developers, and it’s normal for users to be confused; to put it simply, the more components there are, the clearer the responsibility boundaries need to be, otherwise when something goes wrong, everyone just blames each other. Anyway, when I look at cross-chain now, I first ask “Who am I actually trusting,” then talk about the returns.