Exclusive Interview with Wormhole Co-founder: Theft Incident Cultivates "Resilience," Collaborating with AMD to Deploy ZK Upgrade for Security

Interview and Compilation: Wendy, Kean, Foresight News

Yesterday, the airdrop of the Wormhole token $W was officially distributed, attracting significant attention from the community. It has been over two years since the last major theft incident on Wormhole, and the crypto market has emerged from the winter and is welcoming a new spring. On the occasion of the airdrop, Robinson Burkey, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of the Wormhole project, accepted an interview with Foresight News, discussing his insights on leading Wormhole through the theft incident and the crypto industry's winter, as well as the development focus and outlook of Wormhole in this new cycle.

Here are the contents of the interview:

Foresight News: Thank you for accepting the interview with Foresight News. About four months ago, you mentioned on your LinkedIn page: "Now that SBF is going to prison, I'm optimistic that the dark shadow from FTX will start to dissipate." Now, with Bitcoin prices breaking previous highs and continuing to rise, do you think this "crypto spring" has come earlier than expected?

Robinson Burkey: It is difficult to accurately "predict" market trends at a specific point in time. However, regarding the FTX incident, one thing that many people have not truly understood, especially those who do not work in the crypto field, is that the failure of FTX is not a failure of any crypto technology, nor is it a failure of blockchain technology or smart contracts. It is simply an issue with a centralized exchange, and the fact that cryptocurrencies were traded on this exchange does not mean a failure of crypto technology. In my view, many people, upon seeing news about FTX, connect the classic scam elements with cryptocurrencies, or perceive crypto technology negatively. The (outbreak of the FTX incident) was indeed a very difficult time because it was hard for people to discern the truth. But now, the person we mentioned (SBF) has exited the stage, and we have actually seen many different types of "fraudsters" being caught, so we can say that we (in the crypto circle) are slowly rebuilding our reputation. Therefore, when you ask me if the arrival of crypto spring is faster than I expected, it may not necessarily be the case, but I am not surprised by its arrival at all.

Foresight News: As you mentioned, the market is difficult to predict, but does Wormhole's decision to airdrop now also indicate that the team is optimistic about the crypto market and is seeing or has already seen the arrival of a bull market? What specific expectations do you have in this bull market cycle, both in terms of market performance and the goals you hope to achieve?

Robinson Burkey: Many people may want to hear discussions about market price trends in the current market environment, but for Wormhole, we have always focused on developers (builders) and protocols. Our plan is to decentralize the protocol itself (achieving decentralization through tokens), which means that we launched the token to incentivize different types of participants in the Wormhole network, whether they are token holders, node operators, or developers. We planned to launch the token 8 to 12 months ago (during the bear market) to decentralize the Wormhole network, and regardless of the market environment, we have consistently adhered to this plan and built Wormhole.

To be frank, our plan coinciding with market trends is to some extent just a coincidence. We have never tried to predict market trends; we believe that if we build a good ecosystem and protocol, value will naturally accumulate over time, and when the market rises, it will perform well, and when the market falls, it will also stand the test of time. In summary, we did not deliberately plan to airdrop at this point (during the bull market), and of course, we have no complaints about the current market environment.

Foresight News: In answering the first question, you mentioned "recovery," not just the recovery of the crypto market or community, but Wormhole has also experienced a "recovery," as it has faced some challenges in the past, such as the major theft incident and the so-called "spin-off" from Jump. This should also be your first time leading a large project through the market's transition from bear to bull as a co-founder and key leader. Looking back, do you have any special feelings about this experience, or any stories you would like to share with us?

Robinson Burkey: Yes, I certainly feel very fortunate about this. But I also believe that, from a values perspective, a person's inner quality of "resiliency" cannot be underestimated. Wormhole has gone through a long journey, and every step along the way, whether positive or negative, has only made us stronger. When that incident (referring to the theft) occurred over two years ago, we were tested, and coming out of it, we became stronger. We reinvested in security. Now, we are considered one of the safest protocols in this field (referring to cross-chain bridges). When we spun off from Jump, it gave us the opportunity to become a truly decentralized, open protocol, which feels great.

This process has not been without challenges. One prominent feeling I have is that if some things were easy, many people would do them. Without those difficult moments that require you to work 16 hours a day, you cannot achieve those sufficiently challenging "real" successes. The acquisition of these (inner) qualities is not instantaneous. And now, we have built a great team and are prepared for the future.

Foresight News: During such a challenging period, there must have been many tough moments and difficult decisions to make, right?

Robinson Burkey: Yes, I think the most challenging part has been making those seemingly small but very critical decisions along the way. Every small decision accumulates over time, but only if you can consistently make the right choices can you stay on the right path. When making these decisions, we always consider what is most beneficial for the protocol. These small decisions gradually accumulate and ultimately shape the culture of the team and the direction of the product. For example, "When you launch a token, will you pay more attention to regulation when you decentralize?" Such small decisions are very important. I think of it (Wormhole) like a large cruise ship; guiding this massive vessel requires a lot of effort, but it is those numerous small decisions that ultimately allow you to determine the right direction and steer it in that direction.

Foresight News: Now, with the airdrop of the $W token, Wormhole's security will further impact the entire market. What technical improvements or preventive mechanisms has Wormhole implemented to avoid similar major theft incidents from happening again?

Robinson Burkey: I believe that the modularity of the cross-chain layer is very important. First, we have a communication layer, which is the core part of the Wormhole protocol that shares data between two chains; it is a messaging protocol. On top of this, different use cases and applications can be built. The most common and familiar to most people is transferring assets from Chain A to Chain B. Therefore, Wormhole is doing two important things to ensure our security.

First, we have assembled one of the best security teams in the field, including the former CISO of Mozilla Firefox and many people who have worked at Jump Crypto. Our security team has ranked first on the Immunefi bug bounty dashboard for several weeks.

We have conducted over 15 public audits, and what we, or rather our security team, truly focus on is what we call deep defense security.

We are often asked a question: it seems that security "incidents" keep happening in the Web3 world; how can we at least achieve the security level of Web2? The "clumsy methods" mentioned above are our answers.

Deep defense is not a remarkable innovation; it does not involve many popular concepts like AI. What it does is add layers of defense to everything you do. You can think of it like a bank: if you rob a bank, you must get past the front security, which is one layer of defense; you must ensure no one calls the police, which can be considered another layer of defense; the locked door to the vault is the third layer of defense. Our protocol is similar. We have different technologies, one called Governor and another called Global Accountant, which mainly help defend against any (security-threatening) incidents. Of course, we also have many very large bug bounties, some of which are the largest in the industry, to encourage people to hack Wormhole. It is open source, anyone can see it, anyone can use it, and contribute to it. Some people will responsibly look for vulnerabilities and report them, and then we will pay them a bounty.

On the other hand, we are heavily investing in ZK (zero-knowledge proofs). Many people view ZK from a privacy perspective, and solving privacy issues is indeed a good application scenario for ZK technology. However, we see ZK as a way to make bridging more trustless. Speaking of "trustless," we first need to understand that any transaction typically requires trust in some entity or institution; you need to ensure that what they say is true. For example, any information transmitted through a bridge needs to be endorsed by someone; in the case of Wormhole, 13 out of 19 (validators) need to endorse its authenticity. Currently, this seems to be a very reliable model. But what will the future model look like? For us, it means replacing human elements with mathematical elements, meaning that it is not humans who determine what is real, but zero-knowledge proofs that confirm what has happened on one chain. Then, you can execute another action on another chain.

In summary, we have invested significant resources in these two areas. On one hand, we focus on the present, concentrating on how current security is, how to improve it, and how to make it stronger. On the other hand, we also look to the future, considering what future security will look like and how to ensure we remain industry leaders in this regard. I would like to see us as leaders in ZK bridging.

Foresight News: You mentioned ZK, which is also what we wanted to ask about. Wormhole announced earlier this year that it would increase its adoption of ZK technology. Regarding the security hierarchy/modularity you just mentioned, what specific application prospects do you think ZK technology will have?

Robinson Burkey: In the crypto field, we like to use mental models, which can be helpful because many things in this field are complex new technologies, and we need a way to explain them. Here, we introduce the concept of interoperability; in fact, interoperability is not a new thing. It is a term that people have used before, such as Swift helping banks with interoperability, or AWS needing different cloud servers to interoperate. We are doing the same thing, just applying it to blockchain in a decentralized and secure way. So when we consider the interoperability stack, we have a very basic layer, which is Wormhole. This is the ability for two chains to interoperate.

For example, sending data between Ethereum and Solana is done in a decentralized manner, and no one can tamper with it. So this is the foundational layer that Wormhole provides. On top of this, as we mentioned earlier, you can build different asset applications. For instance, one of the most popular applications on Wormhole is Portal. But when we consider the foundational layer, what is the true significance of Wormhole? We connect over 30 chains. Today, to send a message from Chain A to Chain B, if you are a user, you typically use an application. Developers manage this application behind the scenes.

We have 19 guardians (validator nodes, guardians are the term for Wormhole validator nodes), coming from the largest validator node providers like Chorus One, P2P, Figment, etc. (On Wormhole) you need at least 13 of them—an absolute majority—to endorse your information to reach consensus. This is our current security model. Uniswap conducted a third-party assessment and concluded that this is currently the safest model. Some other (cross-chain bridge service) providers cannot or are not allowed to provide messaging for Uniswap's governance or security.

Returning to zero-knowledge proofs. When we consider this foundational layer, we have guardians verifying any interaction information. We have processed over a billion pieces of information, handling tens of thousands of pieces daily. Instead of having these validator nodes verify interaction information, we are actually building something akin to light clients. In short, you do not have to trust any single validator node; you only need to trust "math."

However, (using ZK technology) requires significant computational power to run these proofs at very high speeds. People want to complete transactions quickly, not wait minutes, hours, or days. Therefore, we have begun collaborating with four different ZK teams, and these top ZK cryptographers are contributing to the Wormhole protocol across 30 different chains. In this context, we have also partnered with AMD (graphics card manufacturer) to bring them into Web3. AMD will become our infrastructure provider, and we need industry-leading infrastructure to generate these (ZK) proofs as quickly as possible to perform these mathematical calculations. What users will see is that they only need to simply send some asset to a chain. However, this transfer needs to be done as quickly and securely as possible, which is our goal.

Foresight News: You mentioned AMD, and I also saw your recent announcement on X account about the partnership with AMD. There were some comments below asking why not Nvidia or when you will collaborate with Nvidia. The products of AMD and Nvidia are quite different; what technical considerations are behind the choice of this partner?

Robinson Burkey: Actually, there isn't. I think for us, Nvidia has indeed performed very well in the market recently, closely associated with the AI market, and can be seen as a kind of tool investment. However, we still view AMD as a leader in this field, and we have been in a partnership with them for a year and a half. The GPUs and infrastructure they provide are exactly what we need. At the same time, AMD is also very interested in how to participate more in public chains. We are a very natural partner because, as I said, our needs align well with the services they provide. We can commercialize many of their infrastructures and apply them to existing use cases that have product-market fit. So I would say that our lack of collaboration with Nvidia is not based on any particular reason, and there are no special barriers to collaborating with them in the future. But for now, we are working with AMD to make on-chain transactions and multi-chain operations as secure and fast as possible.

Foresight News: In this so-called bull market cycle, many projects are looking forward to development. For Wormhole, I think your development is mainly based on two points: one is the growth of the entire cross-chain bridge ecosystem, and the other is capturing more market share from competitors. From the first point, where do you think the biggest growth opportunities lie, and are there any particular public chains or applications worth paying attention to? And for the second point, what is your competitive strategy?

Robinson Burkey: These are very good and detailed questions, and I will answer as directly as possible. You know, our business is to connect different chains, so we must be very clear about which chains have good prospects, which chains have truly good applications, and ultimately, which chains currently have trading activity. I think we are seeing the popularity of high-throughput chains like SUI, Solana, and emerging chains like Monad. After a simple experience, users will realize that the transaction fees on these chains are very cheap, and the interaction speed is very fast. This smooth on-chain interaction experience is closer to the traditional internet, naturally leading to greater demand, which is why we will continue to increase our investment in these chains. Meanwhile, with Ethereum's new upgrades, we have also seen that the interaction costs on Ethereum Layer 2 have significantly decreased. For us, an interesting question arises: as these chains expand, our business model becomes increasingly important. If there are many different chains, it leads to what I call chain proliferation, resulting in liquidity fragmentation. Therefore, interoperability protocols like Wormhole can help solve many of these issues. So for us, what is truly important now, and one of our competitive advantages, is to ensure that our engineering team invests time and effort in connecting the right chains.

Wormhole has connected about five different VMs to date, supporting multiple runtime environments and programming languages. Currently, our closest competitors can only connect two, which is a significant competitive advantage for us. One of our focuses will continue to be investing in chains like Solana and Sui, with Sui running on Move VM. We are very confident in this high-throughput ecosystem, and we are also paying attention to L2 and how to solve liquidity fragmentation issues.

Our differentiation mainly comes from three aspects. First is the security we often talk about; we need to continue to ensure that everyone knows Wormhole is currently the safest protocol, which is our top priority. Developers care about security and decentralization. If these cannot be achieved, incidents of multi-chain bridges being attacked can occur, where a very small number of participants in a multi-signature can allow attackers to control an absolute majority of nodes, effectively stealing the entire bridge. Therefore, we place great importance on security as a differentiator.

The second point of our differentiation is use cases. We need to ensure we lead in the asset layer. Remember we discussed the information and asset layers? Users want to transfer native assets between the most chains in the fastest and safest way. What they need is not a super secure solution that only connects two chains, but a solution that can connect over 30 chains and transfer hundreds of assets as safely as possible. So we will continue to invest in the asset layer. We have launched a native ETH bridge on Layer 2 networks and are launching a native USDT bridge on Layer 2 networks. This type of asset use case still accounts for about 80% of on-chain use cases, so we will continue to invest in it.

Lastly, I want to say that we are investing in the next generation of multi-chain applications, such as the Pyth oracle. It has been used on over 50 chains and can achieve cross-chain functionality faster than Chainlink. We have also seen the emergence of native cross-chain lending DeFi applications. Needless to say, as DeFi applications become simple enough and secure enough, we will see more and more retail investors starting to use them.

Foresight News: Returning to the airdrop, the primary function of the $W token in this airdrop is as a governance token. In the future, whether for maintaining market confidence or proving its value, is there a possibility of further increasing the utility of this token?

Robinson Burkey: As we briefly introduced in our blog, this token will have many uses. I think one very interesting aspect of interoperability protocols is that there are many token models that can be referenced for underlying blockchains, such as how you use tokens in a blockchain ecosystem? How do you incentivize ecosystem participants? I would say the same applies at the application layer. For example, how do you use tokens in a decentralized exchange, money market, or other various types of applications? However, in these interoperability protocols, I believe there are not many existing models to draw from for actual token use cases. Therefore, for us, staying ahead in this regard is an exciting challenge.

So to answer your question, this token can be used for network expansion; if a network wants to join the Wormhole network, it can use the token. We have a Wormhole query product that essentially pulls data from the chain proactively, like making an API call, and in this scenario, the token can also be used. The token can also be used during bridging if you want information or assets to be transmitted or transferred faster or more securely. Therefore, the possibilities for token usage are endless, and we hope everyone stays tuned in the coming weeks as we will release a roadmap for these token functionalities.

Foresight News: Regarding governance tokens, there has always been some controversy, particularly highlighted in the Uniswap cross-chain bridge proposal voting, where there was competition between a16z supporting Layer Zero and Jump supporting Wormhole regarding voting decisions, emphasizing the influence of capital in token governance decisions. How do you view this event? What kind of mechanism do you hope the W token will operate under? Especially given the concerns about different NFT project holders being allocated different amounts of W tokens, how do you respond to these concerns?

Robinson Burkey: Overall, governance is still a new thing. This is an emerging industry, so there will certainly be challenges at the beginning, and we need to continuously strive for better governance models. I think this is a consensus for the entire industry. However, regarding the Uniswap event, I want to say that, to my knowledge, Jump did not actually participate in governance. I know a16z controls a large amount of Uni voting power, and many people have pointed out that this could create conflicts of interest in certain decisions or lead to excessive concentration of power. I do not oppose this view. Therefore, I think the fundamental issue is the importance of fairly and decentralized distributing voting power; you need to ensure that you do not concentrate too much token power in certain representatives and also need to ensure that there are many different groups voting when proposals are initiated, because in governance, those with voting rights do not always participate in voting. Only when representatives are very concerned about certain issues will they vote; some people may hold tokens but do not pay much attention to the issues that need voting, so they do not always participate in voting, meaning that those who participate in voting will always have certain purposes. I think this is the most important part of token governance, and it needs to be done correctly from the beginning to avoid issues like excessive centralization. So for Wormhole, we hope that the delegation of governance rights is even, fair, and decentralized, so that we can have the best governance system.

Finally, I want to say that this token, in a sense, is just the beginning, as we are making the protocol increasingly decentralized, and contributors will continue to release a large number of new products and cutting-edge products that will make blockchain easier to use and better serve everyone. It will also connect all blockchains, of course, provided that token holders vote on these upgrades and new products. But we are genuinely excited about the future of Wormhole; three years is not a long time, but for the on-chain world, it has already surpassed a cycle. However, our goals go beyond this; we have made plans for decades and will continue to release new products and drive the development of cutting-edge technologies in the future.