Security Challenges of Cross-Chain Protocols and the Limitations of LayerZero

The security issues of cross-chain protocols have become a major pain point in the Web3 field. In recent years, the losses caused by security incidents related to cross-chain protocols have been enormous, and their importance and urgency even surpass Ethereum's scalability solutions. However, due to the public's limited understanding of cross-chain protocols, it is difficult to accurately assess their security levels.

This article will take LayerZero as an example to discuss the security risks existing in some current cross-chain protocols. LayerZero adopts a simplified architectural design, executing cross-chain communication through Relayer and supervised by Oracle. Although this design is simple, it also introduces potential security risks.

First, LayerZero simplifies the traditional multi-node validation to a single Oracle validation, which undoubtedly greatly reduces the security factor. Secondly, this design relies on the independence assumption of Relayers and Oracles, but this assumption is difficult to maintain in the long term and does not align with the principles of crypto-native.

There is a view that increasing the number of Relayers can enhance security. However, this approach does not fundamentally change the product characteristics and may instead introduce new problems. For example, if the configuration of LayerZero nodes is allowed to be modified, an attacker may exploit this vulnerability to forge messages, leading to serious security risks.

LayerZero claims to be infrastructure, but it is actually more like middleware. It cannot provide unified security guarantees for ecological projects, which is a fundamental difference from true infrastructure. Multiple security teams have pointed out potential vulnerabilities in LayerZero, including issues with configuration access permissions and message modification.

Looking back at the Bitcoin white paper, we can see that decentralization and trustlessness are the core concepts of blockchain technology. However, LayerZero's design seems to contradict these principles. It relies on multiple trusted third parties, which prevents true decentralization and trustlessness.

Although LayerZero has achieved some success in the market, its product design may not meet the needs of true decentralized security. If these fundamental issues cannot be resolved, even with a large amount of funding and users, it may face challenges due to insufficient security.

Building a truly decentralized cross-chain protocol remains a complex technical challenge. Future development may require the use of advanced technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs to enhance the security and reliability of cross-chain protocols. Only through continuous innovation and improvement can we truly achieve interoperability in the blockchain world.