Ankr (@ankr): How Ankr vRPC Secures NEAR's Cross-Chain Bridge — Verifiable Infrastructure at the Protocol Layer

How Ankr vRPC Secures NEAR's Cross-Chain Bridge — Verifiable Infrastructure at the Protocol Layer Cross-chain bridges are one of the most valuable, and most attacked, components in web3. The statistics are stark: bridge exploits have cost the industry billions. And while much of the security conversation focuses on smart contract audits and governance mechanisms, the infrastructure layer beneath the bridge is consistently overlooked. That's the layer Ankr vRPC addresses. And NEAR Protocol is where it's running in production. The problem nobody talks about A bridge verifier has one job: read state from a source chain to confirm a transaction happened before releasing funds on the destination chain. In a standard setup, that verification happens through an RPC node. If that node is compromised, the entire system breaks. A malicious actor who controls or compromises the RPC layer can feed the bridge verifier fabricated confirmations, making it believe transactions occurred that never did. Funds are released. The chain records nothing abnormal. The exploit is complete. This isn't theoretical. It's the attack vector behind some of the largest bridge exploits in web3 history. The RPC layer is trusted by default, and that default trust is the vulnerability. Standard RPC has no answer to this. A compromised node returns data that is indistinguishable from legitimate data. The bridge can't tell the difference. The application can't tell the difference. Nothing in the system can tell the difference, because nothing in the system is checking. What Ankr vRPC does differently Ankr vRPC runs inside an Intel TDX hardware enclave. A Trusted Execution Environment is a hardware-isolated computing environment where code executes in complete isolation from the host system. The infrastructure provider cannot read the data being processed. The operating system cannot modify it. The signing key never leaves the enclave. Every response is signed inside the enclave before it leaves. NEAR's bridge verifier receives the response and the signature. It verifies the signature locally before acting on the data. If the response has been modified at any point between the enclave and the verifier, by the infrastructure provider, by a man-in-the-middle, by anyone, the verification fails and the call fails closed. No funds are released against fabricated data. The attack surface that standard RPC leaves open is eliminated at the hardware level. Why this matters for NEAR specifically NEAR Protocol's bridge infrastructure connects it to other major chains, enabling asset transfers and cross-chain functionality central to NEAR's ecosystem. That bridge is only as secure as the infrastructure verifying the state it reads. A compromised RPC node is sufficient to defeat every other security measure in the system. Ankr vRPC means NEAR's bridge verifier doesn't need to trust the infrastructure provider. It verifies the response cryptographically, independently, before acting. The trust assumption that standard RPC requires, that the node operator is honest and uncompromised, is removed entirely. This positions Ankr as a security-critical infrastructure partner for NEAR, not just an RPC provider. The layer that ensures the bridge's verification is grounded in cryptographic proof rather than operator trust. The broader implication Bridge security is one of the most urgent infrastructure problems in web3. As cross-chain activity grows, the attack surface grows with it. Every bridge that relies on standard RPC has the same vulnerability: a compromised node it cannot detect. Verifiable RPC infrastructure removes that vulnerability at the source. And Ankr's deployment for NEAR demonstrates it working at the protocol level in production. For bridging protocols evaluating their infrastructure: standard RPC trusts the provider. Ankr vRPC verifies it. Don't trust your RPC. Verify it. Learn more about Ankr vRPC → Connect to NEAR via Ankr →