Crypto hacks often look like security failures. Structurally, they are execution failures — withdrawals that moved without a verified authority state.
Crypto exchange hacks are not just security breaches. They are execution boundary failures.
The credentials were valid. The signing keys worked. The threshold logic passed. Every component functioned correctly in isolation.
What was missing: no one verified the authority state at the moment of withdrawal. The system asked "is this request formatted correctly?" — not "should this action be permitted right now?"
"The signing key worked. The threshold passed.
But the authority state was never attested."
🚂 In railway systems, this is called an interlock — nothing moves until the state is verified at the point of actuation.
"Zero Trust secures access.
Execution Boundary secures action."