Bridge Security Model
This page states plainly who can authorize what, today and under V3. See Status & Roadmap for what is live.
Today: the hardened R1 bridge (LIVE)
| Layer | Protection |
|---|---|
| RougeChain side | Withdrawals are ML-DSA-65-signed transactions. A withdrawal either burns and records a payout atomically or fails with a receipt — it cannot burn without a payout record or create a payout without a burn. |
| Deposits | Every mint is verified against the actual Base transaction (contract, sender, amount) at a confirmation depth (default 6). Claims are de-duplicated, so a deposit cannot mint twice. |
| Payouts | Each withdrawal is paid at most once; fulfillment is re-verified on Base at confirmation depth before it is marked complete. |
XRGE vault (BridgeVaultV2) | Owned by a Safe multisig (2-of-3). A separate hot relayer key can only call release() within per-transaction and rolling daily caps, and only while unpaused. Emergency withdrawal is behind a 48-hour timelock. |
qETH / qUSDC (RougeBridge) | The RougeBridge owner is currently a single operator key, not a multisig; that key also performs releases. The guardian role is held by a 2-of-3 Safe multisig, which can pause the bridge and cancel queued large releases. Other protections include the 24-hour timelock on large releases and daemon-side controls. Migrating ownership to multisig control is a planned security improvement. Releases are also protected against replay by L1 transaction id. |
| Operations | Daemon-side kill switch and per-transaction cap; automatic refunds are disabled in production (failed releases are handled manually). |
The trust assumption: releases on Base are authorized by classical ECDSA keys (the relayer key and the Safe owners). These are conventional, quantum-vulnerable signatures. The R1 bridge limits the damage a compromised relayer key can do (caps, pause, multisig control), but it does not make the Base side post-quantum. The bridge is also operated by a small team, not a decentralized set.
V3 (NOT ACTIVATED): XRGE only
V3 moves XRGE release authorization to an M-of-N ML-DSA-65 authority verified on-chain, on top of verified RougeChain finality. Classical keys keep only limited roles (pausing, and actions that are themselves gated by the post-quantum authority). Details: V3 Post-Quantum XRGE Bridge, Authority Rotation.
| Asset | Today | After V3 activation |
|---|---|---|
| XRGE | R1, classical Base-side authorization | ML-DSA-65 authorization on Base |
| qETH | R1, classical Base-side authorization | Unchanged (outside V3 scope) |
| qUSDC | R1, classical Base-side authorization | Unchanged (outside V3 scope) |
| qBTC | Separate Bitcoin bridge | Unchanged (separate system) |
What V3 does not fix
- Base itself, the XRGE ERC-20, and users' EVM wallets use classical cryptography.
- qETH/qUSDC custody remains classical.
- Bitcoin custody uses Bitcoin's own (classical) signatures.
- V3 is unaudited until the external review completes.