many false dichotomies around this you can't reap the benefits of being "early" if you're not willing to stomach the path it requires many new folks don't get how this works, so a rough explanation is in order, as cross-chain stuff often comes up in crypto an imperfect but useful analogy: near intents is to near what hyperunit is to hyperliquid that is, it is not the chain itself, but a cross-chain protocol that augments the chain -- you can think of it as a collection of bridges + some other shit. but it is not part of consensus a cross-chain protocol, for all chains, will always have more trust assumptions than the underlying chain -- unit for example also has OFAC screening as does pretty much anything of this nature (your favorite defi or trading app on any chain also almost certainly fits this and even some validators, with few exceptions) this is almost always true for anything that's not the main chain itself, as most cross-chain protocols are generally secured by MPC networks (or multisigs) and MPC clusters are by definition smaller than core validator clusters and this remains true of all connective tissue, e.g., recall how Arbitrum multisig froze the funds of NK hacker a few months ago that of course did not affect the "moneyness" of Ethereum as that is Arbitrum and not ETH on Ethereum itself same thing here I am not aware of any system that can function much differently on risk parameters today (though I can think of a few who lie about it who get called out by zach every few months) the aspiration of course is that over time MPC networks (or multisig governance in the case of rollups) get decentralized enough to reduce the concentration of influence and minimize it to only provable bug patches and asymptotically zero human judgement that is fundamentally what you are underwriting this is a big reason why Solana seeks to concentrate everything internally on a giant chain so that bridge trust risk is minimized (though in practice, this is only half the picture since for example RWAs fundamentally have control authority with the issuer itself, that's why USDT can be frozen on any chain) so, there are three paths here: i) you transact on the main chain itself with only the native asset of the chain, i.e ZEC on Zcash, BTC on Bitcoin, SOL on Solana this is maximal risk reduction, but obviously limiting for anything beyond SoV or payments ii) you do your bridging via CEXes fine, but very large tradeoffs for asset selection, withdrawal/deposit limits, KYC, accessibility, privacy and you get way worse freezing/trust problems iii) you do your bridging via crypto-native protocols that are relatively less decentralized than an entire blockchain itself but are improving security and decentralization constantly, especially against CEXes for crypto to become a truly planetary economy, iii) must work. this is not a choice, it's just a matter of who wins that segment but the only way iii) can work is if such protocols survive long enough to not get shut down by the feds because then the exchanges will default win and that aspirational future for crypto will be entirely lost a valid criticism here is that this should have already been maximally decentralized already, but ofc that comes with its own tradeoffs like being too slow to patch bugs or add features in a relatively nascent stage again, your job is underwriting the execution risk. and you must do so while understanding the parts at play