Gnosis has launched a Hashi bridge aggregator to protect cross-chain protocols from hacking.
The Hashi bridge aggregator requires two cross-chain bridges to validate a transaction.
Celer, LayerZero, Axiom, LiFi, Wormhole, ZK Collective and Succinct Labs are examples of cross-chain bridges that have integrated with Hashi.
In 2022 more than $2 billion were stolen from cross-chain bridges.
Keyword: Bridge aggregator, crypto bridge, Blockchain Bridge, cross-chain Bridge, bridge protocols, Gnosis, Hashi Bridge aggregator, hackers
Introduction
Probably the greatest risks that the blockchain faces are that of digital asset thefts through various ways including hacking. For a long time now, the industry has been working hard to find the best solution. Today, we cover how Gnosis Hashi Bridge aims to overcome the problem of hacking.
Hashbridge aggregator to prevent hacks
Recently, the team behind Gnosis launched a hash oracle aggregator for blockchain bridges aimed at preventing hacks. Martin Köppelmann, Gnosis CEO said that the oracle aggregator will make bridges more secure as it requires more than one bridge to validate any transaction.
According to Köppelmann, Hashi will prevent multi-sig governance attacks since it disallows governance to intervene when there is no agreement among the bridges.
Köppelmann explained, “Here you can have this nice tradeoff where you say ‘the governance is not allowed to do anything,’ so it cannot interfere with the system unless there is explicitly a conflict or a bug.”
Who has integrated with Gnosis?
There are several crypto projects that have already integrated with Gnosis. These include Celer, LayerZero, Axiom, LiFi, Wormhole, ZK Collective and Succinct Labs. In addition, other projects like DendrETH, ZK Collective and Connext have promised to integrate with it.
Over $2 billion was stolen from bridges in 2021 and 2022
As things stand, there is a need for a better solution to the problem of hacking than the ones currently on the market. Therefore, the crypto industry would like to assess how effective the Gnosis solution is in preventing hacking. The following graph shows how crypto thefts increased in 2022. Crypto thefts increased in 2022 - Chainanalysis
The amount of stolen cryptocurrencies increased from $1.2 billion in 2021 to $1.9 billion in 2022. Chainanalysis has predicted that the amount of stolen cryptocurrencies will increase in 2023 as well.
Additionally, Chainalysis has reported that more than $2 billion worth of digital assets were stolen from blockchain bridges in 2022 alone. Incidentally, thefts from the bridges in 2022 accounted for 69% of the total stolen figures. The cross-chain bridges are the biggest target of malicious actors since they control different cryptocurrencies.
Read also: Gate.io Completed xDAI STAKE (STAKE) to Gnosis (GNO) Swap
For example, in 2022 Binance Chain lost $568 million worth of BNB coins while Nomad lost cryptocurrencies worth $200 million when the hackers exploited a verification vulnerability. The other cross-chain bridges that were exploited and lost large quantities of cryptocurrencies are Harmony bridge ($100 M), Ronin Bridge ($600 M), Meter.io DeFi ($4.2M), Wormhole ($325M) and Multichain ($1.4M).
What is Gnosis?
Gnosis, launched in 2015, is a blockchain infrastructure that offers various crypto related services. In 2021 Gnosis DAO launched the Gnosis Chain which is a side-chain for the Ethereum blockchain that provides a scaling solution to the network. Gnosis Hashi - Usethebitcoin
In the first place Gnosis offered price prediction service for the blockchain sector before it expanded its services to include a decentralized custody protocol, Safe (an asset management platform), a trading protocol and the CoW Protocol as well as cross-chain bridging.
What is a blockchain bridge?
A blockchain bridge is a protocol that enables transactions between two or more blockchains. It makes it possible for the blockchains to communicate with each other. If there are no cross-chain bridges users may want to convert a cryptocurrency to fiat if they want to purchase a coin or token that exists on another blockchain.
A crypto bridge is important as it creates interoperability between blockchains making it very easy to move assets among them. They also enable decentralized applications that exist on different blockchains to communicate with each other. Therefore, people can use dApps on different blockchains.
For example, gamers may play a game that exists on a certain blockchain on other networks. As an illustration, they can access a game built on the Ethereum blockchain on Solana.
Are crypto bridges safe?
Bridge protocols are prone to exploits by hackers as flaws may exist in their smart contracts or the underlying codes. What increases their risks is the fact that there are software systems that are built on other blockchains. Therefore, malicious actors may exploit vulnerabilities that exist on the blockchains or the cross-bridge smart contract.
As we mentioned above, there were many hacks on cross-chain bridges in 2021 and 2022, showing how risky they are. Likewise, the fact that the hackers are becoming more sophisticated than before increases the risks of blockchain bridges.
Conclusion
Gnosis has launched a Hashi bridge aggregator to reduce the possibility of hacking of cross-chain bridges. With Hashi, every transaction is approved by two or more bridges. Most cross-chain bridges have risks since any vulnerability in one of the involved smart contracts or software may lead to hacking.