Emergency Halt Procedures

Emergency halt procedures are the established protocols and governance actions taken to shut down a system in response to a critical security threat. For a bridge, this involves stopping all cross-chain transfers and locking the smart contracts to prevent further movement of funds.

These procedures must be pre-planned and tested to ensure that they can be executed rapidly during an active exploit. A key challenge is ensuring that the halt is authorized by a trusted governance body while also being fast enough to stop the damage.

Once the system is halted, the recovery process involves identifying the vulnerability, patching the code, and potentially restoring funds through a community-approved plan.