Inside an On‑Chain Incident Room
When an exploit hits, the question isn’t “what happened?” — it’s “who is doing what right now?” Here’s how an effective incident room answers that.
Coordination is the first casualty of chaos. Here is how to keep it.
From Alert to Activation
In a good incident, the first alert doesn’t lead to panic — it leads to activation. Within minutes, the right people are in the room (or call), the right dashboards are on‑screen, and everyone knows the goal for the next 30 minutes.
Speed is life. In the Nomad bridge exploit, the difference between saving $5M and losing it was a matter of minutes. An effective incident response plan (IRP) removes the "fog of war" by pre-assigning roles and communication channels.
Who’s in the Room?
You need a predefined roster. Do not figure this out during the hack.
The exact org chart varies, but an effective on‑chain incident room usually includes:
- A technical lead with commit access or upgrade authority.
- An on‑chain analyst who can navigate live flows and history.
- A decision‑maker from the business or protocol team.
- Communications and legal support on standby.
The Commander: One person must be in charge. They don't touch the keyboard. Their job is to maintain the timeline, facilitate communication, and make the hard calls (e.g., "Pause the bridge").
The Information Surfaces That Matter
Your "War Room" needs three screens visible to everyone:
- The Ledger: A live block explorer view of the attacker's wallet.
- The Code: The vulnerable contract code with the exploit lines highlighted.
- The Timeline: A shared document logging every event and decision.
At Trinetra, we think in terms of “information surfaces” — the places people look when they’re under pressure. In a mature setup, those surfaces include:
- A live incident board: what we know, what we don’t, what’s next.
- A focused view of affected contracts, pools and wallets.
- Key external channels: explorers, social chatter, upstream venues.
How Trinetra Supports the Room
When Trinetra is part of the stack, the incident room doesn’t start with a blank screen. Teams come in to a pre‑curated view that:
- Pins the most relevant entities (contracts, wallets, pools) to a dedicated incident workspace.
- Highlights related activity over the last hours and days.
- Surfaces overlapping exposure from your own portfolio.
Instead of manually stitching together graphs and screenshots, analysts can focus on what the attackers are doing and what options are on the table.
After the Room
Once the immediate incident is contained, a different kind of work begins: the post‑mortem. The strongest teams treat this as an opportunity to upgrade not only code and controls, but also how the next incident room will run.
Incident rooms are stressful. They’re also where your security, engineering and business culture become visible. With the right preparation and tooling, they can be a place of clarity instead of chaos.