Synapse

Synapse receives a C risk grade (44/100) from Hindenrank, where lower scores indicate lower risk. Moderate risk — established bridge with high volume, but bridge exploits remain the single deadliest category in DeFi and Synapse already had a close call A cross-chain bridge for moving tokens between blockchains, processing $2.5B+ in monthly volume with $80M in deposits. It narrowly avoided an $8M hack in 2021 when validators caught a bug in forked code just in time. Its C grade reflects bridge security risks compounded by validator trust assumptions and liquidity fragmentation.

The key risks identified for Synapse are: (1) Bridge hacks are the biggest source of DeFi losses. Synapse barely avoided an $8M exploit in 2021 from a bug in code it copied from another project. The next bug might not be caught in time (2) During a market crash, everyone tries to bridge back to Ethereum at the same time. The Ethereum liquidity pool drains, slippage spikes to 5-20%, and users on smaller chains get stuck with no exit (3) Bridge security depends on validators staking SYN tokens. If the SYN price drops, the cost to corrupt validators drops with it, making the bridge cheaper to attack

Synapse scores 44/100 across eight risk dimensions: Mechanism Novelty: 3/15, Interaction Severity: 12/20, Oracle Surface: 5/10, Documentation Gaps: 3/10, Track Record: 7/15, Scale Exposure: 3/10, Regulatory Risk: 3/10, Vitality Risk: 8/10. The highest risk area is Vitality Risk at 8/10.

Among 19 rated Bridge protocols on Hindenrank, Synapse ranks #15 by safety (lowest risk score = safest). Its 44/100 risk score and C grade place it among the riskier Bridge protocols.

Synapse scores 7/15 on the Track Record risk dimension, indicating some history of security incidents or exploits. Higher scores reflect more severe or frequent incidents. Review the full risk report for details.