Two prominent industry voices have issued stark warnings about the structural risks and limitations of the current cross-chain infrastructure, arguing that centralized bridges and siloed blockchains are undermining the core promise of financial freedom in web3 and creating a systemic risk comparable to the FTX collapse.
Temujin Louie, CEO of Wanchain, argues that true financial freedom is impossible when user assets are trapped within single blockchains. He states that the current ecosystem is defined by "invisible borders," where each blockchain operates as a siloed jurisdiction with its own rules and liquidity pools. This fragmentation, he contends, limits users' ability to act on opportunities, recreates the constraints of traditional finance, and fuels inefficient network tribalism. Louie emphasizes that ownership alone is not freedom without the practical ability to move capital seamlessly.
He identifies centralized bridges as a flawed solution, calling them single points of failure that introduce vendor lock-in and regulatory vulnerability. "Financial freedom cannot rest on infrastructure that collapses under centralized pressure," Louie writes. The path forward, according to him, requires industry-wide, abstracted cross-chain standards and decentralized interoperability to raise the participation floor for all users, not just the technical elite.
Kadan Stadelmann, CTO of Komodo Platform, delivers an even more dire assessment, labeling centralized bridges as "crypto’s next FTX waiting to happen." He points to a catastrophic track record: over $2.8 billion has been drained through bridge exploits, accounting for roughly 40% of all funds stolen in Web3, citing the Multichain collapse and the Ronin hack as prime examples.
Stadelmann criticizes the wrapped-asset system as a "fragile illusion" that concentrates risk into a small number of validators or multisig groups. He warns that the consequences of a major bridge failure would ripple far beyond a single token, causing lending markets to seize, liquidity to dry up, and entire DeFi ecosystems to collapse due to their reliance on wrapped BTC, ETH, and stablecoins. "One or two big bridge failures at the wrong time could trigger a liquidity crisis on par with FTX," he states.
Both experts call for a return to first principles. Stadelmann advocates for native trading and trust-minimized protocols, such as atomic swaps, which move assets directly between users on their origin chains without custodial intermediaries. He argues the industry has prioritized convenience and speed over resilience, building "higher on quicksand." The clock is ticking, with regulators circling and institutional trust at stake. The next market cycle, they suggest, will be defined not by hype but by credibility and infrastructure that doesn't "blow up when the pressure hits."
