Portal

Our assessment

Portal holds $1.44bn across 24 chains with two audits and reports linked — the strongest evidence profile of any bridge in this comparison. Its history includes one of the largest exploits in DeFi.

February 2022, and what followed

An attacker exploited a signature verification flaw and minted roughly $325m of wrapped ETH without depositing anything. The hole was covered in full by the parent company within days, so users lost nothing. That response — immediate, complete, and funded by the operator rather than socialised — is rarer than the exploit itself.

Why bridges are the most dangerous thing in DeFi

A bridge holds real assets on one chain and issues claims on another. Break the issuance logic and you can mint claims without deposits, draining everything. More value has been lost to bridge exploits than to any other category of DeFi failure, which is why counterparty risk carries 45% of the score here — the highest weight we apply anywhere.

What the evidence shows now

Two audits with linked reports, documented mechanics, and a rebuilt system with a security programme following the incident. A protocol that was exploited, disclosed it, covered the loss and published the remediation is demonstrating something a never-tested protocol cannot.

Who it suits

Portal fits users moving assets across many chains who want the best-documented bridge available. Users who can avoid bridging — by buying the asset natively on the destination chain — should do that instead, whatever the bridge scores.