Flare Founder Defends FXRP Security Amid Ripple Engineer's Bridge Concerns

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Flare Networks co-founder Hugo Philion has responded to concerns about FXRP after Ripple engineer Neil Hartner raised questions about the security of blockchain bridges.

Notably, the discussion followed a security incident involving Liquid Network’s Liquid BTC. The company said hackers withdrew about 4,000 BTC, worth roughly $320 million at the time, from the Liquid Federation wallet.

Hartner responded to the incident by saying, “Bridges are hard.” Meanwhile, Flare promoter Hussein Badakhchani replied that Flare had “fixed” the problems associated with bridges.

However, Hartner responded by saying, “I think of this often,” while referencing a 2024 warning that there are essentially two types of bridges: those that have already been hacked and those that will eventually be hacked.

Giving a subtle jab at Flare, founder Philion joined the conversation.

Philion said it was “super depressing” to see comments from key Ripple figures that appear to ignore concerns important to XRP holders and the Flare ecosystem.

He said comments from well-known Ripple figures could make the XRP community think that Ripple is against Flare and FXRP. Philion stressed that this is not the case.

He then explained why he believes FXRP was built with security in mind. According to Philion, most of the XRP used in FXRP is protected through XRPL Escrow, the same system Ripple uses to hold its large XRP reserves.

He said XRPL Escrow has safely held large amounts of XRP for years, so the likelihood of a major, undiscovered security flaw is relatively low. Philion added that if XRPL Escrow itself had a serious security problem, it would affect much more than just FXRP.

Philion also explained what could happen if FXRP were hacked. He said that if an attack occurred, most of the XRP held in escrow would be moved to a custodian for protection. The remaining XRP, usually less than 20%, is backed by additional collateral in stablecoins and FLR.

The idea is to limit how much money an attacker could steal.

Philion said FXRP was designed to keep the amount of funds at risk as small as possible. This means that even if a security breach occurred, the losses would be much smaller than those seen in some major bridge hacks.

Meanwhile, Hartner later said Philion had misunderstood his earlier comments. He explained that his main concern was the long history of bridge hacks. Because of this, he believes users should be “hyper-vigilant” when using any bridge.

Hartner also said he was not suggesting that Flare is careless about security. Instead, he was warning that saying a bridge has “fixed” its security problems could make users overly confident.

You’re misreading me. Given how many bridges have been hacked over the years, users should approach all of them with hypervigilance. My worry is that framing any bridge as having “fixed it” breeds complacency. Not saying that Flare itself is complacent or lax on security.

— Neil Hartner (@illneil) September 7, 2026