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🐳 Daily Edition: Settling the Wrapping vs Bridging Debate

🐳 Daily Edition: Settling the Wrapping vs Bridging Debate

Should the crypto builders move all assets to one chain or make all blockchains more interoperable?

Beluga & Aidan Carney Skytt
July 21, 2026

The crypto market has been bubbling up quietly as we wait for more news around the Clarity Act and for the four-year cycle to tell us the bear market is over. Bitcoin and ETH have been strong, sitting a tad above $65,000 and $1,900 respectively. The factors driving price movement in the crypto market haven't changed much lately, and we covered them extensively in last week's edition.

As we wait for bear hunting season to commence, I wanted to weigh in on one of crypto's oldest debates: wrapping vs. bridging. Is it better to wrap all crypto assets onto the best chain, or should we focus on making chains more interoperable? I'll steelman each side and then give you my thoughts at the end.

We should wrap all assets onto one chain:

This argument presupposes one blockchain is better than the rest (ETH, SOL, SUI, or something else). Using any other blockchain is a second-class experience. Why should I have to bridge to an inferior chain when the asset can be held on the best chain? It also makes things more streamlined and allows builders to work together under one framework. Bridging is slow and expensive. We don't need other chains when we can build Layer 2s for any use case we want on the best chain.

We should focus on improving bridging:

Different blockchains serve different purposes. One size doesn't fit all. Consolidating assets onto one chain carries little weight when bridging is quick. One of the core tenets of crypto is decentralization, and consolidating onto one chain is the antithesis of that. Moving all assets onto one chain gives that chain too much power. It also dramatically increases the impact of hacks, chain shutdowns, and exploits. If the chain's governance makes a bad decision, it could unnecessarily destabilize the entire crypto market.

Wrapping vs Bridging Explained

My thoughts:

I'm firmly in the bridging camp. While I don't view all chains as equal, far from it actually, I do think different chains are better for different things. I generally like ETH more than SOL, but I'm happy the memecoin casino is largely segmented to SOL. I understand why certain RWA blockchains have to be permissioned, but I don't want the entire market to be forced into that box to accommodate them. Niche blockchains also have capabilities designed for their specific use cases, and wrapping those assets onto one chain defeats the point.

Part of Bitcoin's allure is that its transactions are permissionless and immutable. Moving it to SOL, where the blockchain could be rolled back, detracts from its value. Monero is designed to be private. It is valuable because the blockchain caters to privacy. Wrapping that asset and putting it on a public blockchain would make no sense.

When I think about the original cypherpunk ethos of crypto, I imagine a world where all assets are interoperable. I can send you money in my preferred currency, and you can receive it in yours. I can use a private chain, and you can use a permissioned chain, and we can both transact seamlessly on the internet. While many in the space don't care about the original crypto ethos anymore, I do. Developers focusing on making bridging better is positive EV for crypto.