Wormhole Shadow Minting: Cross-Chain Asset Inflation via Interoperability Trust Collapse

Cross-chain interoperability protocols enable asset mobility by locking tokens on a source chain and minting representations on a destination chain. However, this architecture introduces a critical vulnerability when mint authorization is decoupled from verifiable, continuous lock-state enforcement. This paper defines Wormhole Shadow Minting as a class of failures in which wrapped or bridged assets are minted without a provably valid, persistent, and exclusive lock on the origin chain. We analyze structural weaknesses in interoperability bridges, demonstrate how shadow minting creates systemic supply inflation across chains, and show why cryptographic proofs alone are insufficient. A validator-enforced, logic-layer control model is proposed to restore conservation of value across heterogeneous chains.