How we score cross-chain bridges
Bridges have different failure modes than exchanges. We weight Security & Audits highest (35%) because bridge exploits have historically caused the largest crypto losses.
Security & Audits
35% weight- Audit firm reputation and audit recency
- Verification model (optimistic, validity, multisig, MPC)
- Historical exploits, bridge incidents, and post-incident posture
- TVL relative to verifier set / multisig threshold
Transaction Speed
20% weight- Median time-to-fill in our hands-on test
- Worst-case time observed across 5 attempts
- Mode of operation (intent-based, lock-mint, atomic)
Fees
20% weight- Documented LP fee + protocol fee + gas
- True total cost on a real round-trip in our test
- Slippage observed at typical retail size ($1k, $10k)
Chains & Tokens Coverage
15% weight- Number of supported source / destination chains
- Token coverage on the most-used routes
- Native vs wrapped asset support
Reliability
10% weight- Uptime over the past 90 days (where data available)
- Frequency of route disruptions or pause events
- Front-end resilience (alternative UIs, RPC fallbacks)
Want to see how we score exchanges? → Exchange methodology