Native Settlement > Bridges
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 12:30 am
Cross-chain crypto trading often feels seamless — just a few clicks and your trade completes. But what’s happening under the hood is critical for safety. Most swaps today rely on bridges, wrapped assets, or off-chain relayers — systems that hide complexity but increase risk.
Bridges typically work by locking a native asset on one blockchain and minting a “wrapped” version on another. For example, WBTC on Ethereum represents Bitcoin that’s been locked somewhere else. The wrapped token’s value depends entirely on a custodian or system properly backing it. If that backing fails or is compromised — through hacks, keys being stolen, or mismanagement — the peg can break, leaving holders of the wrapped asset with something that isn’t truly equivalent to the original. Historical bridge exploits like Ronin and Wormhole illustrate these risks.
That’s why the article argues that safer crypto trading must fix settlement itself, not just add better bridges. Instead of relying on intermediaries, native-asset settlement handles swaps directly at the protocol level, keeping the actual assets involved rather than synthetic representations.
THORChain is highlighted as a key example. It enables direct native swaps across chains without wrapped tokens — using its own utility token (RUNE) as a routing hub. This means when you swap Bitcoin for Ethereum, you send real BTC and receive real ETH, without trusting a custodial bridge or third party. Validators secure funds using threshold signatures, minimizing central points of failure.
For Bitcoin holders and broader DeFi users, this trust-minimized design enhances security and reduces infrastructure risk — one of the largest sources of loss in the crypto ecosystem.
Ultimately, the article says native-asset settlement is the path to safer decentralized trading because it eliminates the reliance on intermediaries and wrapped assets that have historically been the weak links in cross-chain systems.
Bridges typically work by locking a native asset on one blockchain and minting a “wrapped” version on another. For example, WBTC on Ethereum represents Bitcoin that’s been locked somewhere else. The wrapped token’s value depends entirely on a custodian or system properly backing it. If that backing fails or is compromised — through hacks, keys being stolen, or mismanagement — the peg can break, leaving holders of the wrapped asset with something that isn’t truly equivalent to the original. Historical bridge exploits like Ronin and Wormhole illustrate these risks.
That’s why the article argues that safer crypto trading must fix settlement itself, not just add better bridges. Instead of relying on intermediaries, native-asset settlement handles swaps directly at the protocol level, keeping the actual assets involved rather than synthetic representations.
THORChain is highlighted as a key example. It enables direct native swaps across chains without wrapped tokens — using its own utility token (RUNE) as a routing hub. This means when you swap Bitcoin for Ethereum, you send real BTC and receive real ETH, without trusting a custodial bridge or third party. Validators secure funds using threshold signatures, minimizing central points of failure.
For Bitcoin holders and broader DeFi users, this trust-minimized design enhances security and reduces infrastructure risk — one of the largest sources of loss in the crypto ecosystem.
Ultimately, the article says native-asset settlement is the path to safer decentralized trading because it eliminates the reliance on intermediaries and wrapped assets that have historically been the weak links in cross-chain systems.