A New Era in Security: Risk and Responsibility

What’s next after incentives in Web3 security?

In the last two articles, I tried to look at the concept of security from a slightly different angle than we’re used to, from both the traditional business world and the Web3 world. Fundamentally, there are big similarities and serious differences in how these two worlds view security.

In the first article, I focused on the human factor; in the second, I talked about how security is now shaped not only by closed teams and contracted audit firms but also by communities, independent developers, and bug bounty programs. Naturally, this brings up another question:

In a security model where incentives are so crucial and central, who bears the risk and responsibility?

Because the person who finds the bug is often not the one who suffers its consequences.

Incentives Speed Up Security, But Don’t Eliminate Risk
Bug bounty programs, which I mentioned in the previous article, are one of the strongest tools in Web3 security. The code is open, systems are accessible to everyone, and thanks to economic incentives, many independent eyes can look at the system simultaneously.

The advantages of this approach are pretty clear:

Bugs are found earlier
Auditing becomes continuous, not a one-time thing
Security knowledge is no longer monopolized by closed teams

However, the incentive mechanism doesn’t eliminate risk; it just changes how quickly the risk is noticed.

A bug in a smart contract;

if it’s already running on-chain,
if real users and real money are involved,
its consequences can be immediate and irreversible.

This brings us to another layer of security: responsibility.

What Happens When a Bug Occurs, Not Just When It’s Found?
In the traditional (Web2) world, risk and responsibility are relatively clear. If a system crashes:

The responsible team or institution is known,
Mechanisms like insurance kick in,
Legal processes are initiated.

In Web3, the picture is more complex.

A vulnerability;

might have been found by an independent developer,
could have been reported under a bounty program, or
might have been exploited by someone malicious without anyone noticing.

At this point, even if the question remains the same, the answers differ on the Web3 side: Who is responsible for the damage?

The team that wrote the code?
The project that didn’t close the vulnerability in time?
The user who used the system?
Or “nobody” in a “decentralized” structure?

For example, a small logic error in a smart contract managing a payment flow could be stopped, reversed, or manually intervened in a traditional system when detected. In a system running on-chain, the same error could affect thousands of transactions in seconds and might be irreversible.

So the issue shifts from “how was the bug found?” to “who took on which risk when the bug occurred?”

As Freedom Increases, Responsibility Spreads
The technical freedom Web3 brings is often described as “removing intermediaries.” But this freedom also spreads the responsibility of decision-making, risk-taking, and living with the consequences over a wider area.

In other words, the decentralization of the system doesn’t mean that responsibility disappears; on the contrary, it creates a model where responsibility is less visible but more widespread.

The freedom Web3 offers clarifies the issues of security and responsibility: Now, risk isn’t on a single institution or team; it’s spread across the entire system.

A Security Model Where Risk is Shared
The structure we see in Web3 security today is a model where risk isn’t concentrated in a single actor.

Project teams write the code,
Audit firms check at certain moments,
The community continuously tests the system,
Bounty programs incentivize those who find errors.

But despite all these layers, risk is never completely eliminated. It’s just distributed.

This turns security from merely a technical problem into a governance and responsibility issue as well.

Not Completely Disconnected from Web2
For those coming from the corporate world, this picture isn’t entirely unfamiliar. In traditional business and finance worlds:

Penetration tests don’t guarantee that a bug will be found,
Standards like ISO/SOC provide “adequate security” in processes but don’t ensure absolute security,
Audits capture a snapshot of the system at a moment in time but can’t freeze it in that state.

The difference with Web3 is that it makes this reality much more transparent and exposed. Risk has always been there; at no point in history has there been 100% security. The difference in the Web3 world is that these risks are now visible to everyone.