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What is interoperability?
Interoperability is the ability of separate blockchains to exchange information and assets. Blockchains are built in isolation with different rules, so they cannot talk to each other natively; bridges and similar systems are built to connect them.
What it means for you
Moving a token to another chain usually means a bridge issues a version of it on the other side, so what arrives can be a wrapped token whose value depends on that bridge. Bridge contracts have been hacked for very large sums, so check who runs a bridge and how it holds funds before using it.
How it works
Each chain keeps its own state and rules, so one chain cannot see another's events by itself; something must carry the information across and confirm it. Bridges do this by lock and mint, burn and mint, or atomic swaps with another party. Some designs move only assets; generalized message passing carries arbitrary data and instructions as well. The central trade-off is who confirms the source chain: an outside set of verifiers, such as a multisig, an MPC group or an oracle network, or the connected chains' own validators, which adds no new party.
Sources: ethereum.org: Bridges, ethereum.org: Bridges (developer docs) · checked 4 October 2026
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