The CEO of OpenZeppelin, Manuel Araoz, has issued a stark warning regarding the safety of decentralized finance (DeFi), attributing the growing risks to advancements in artificial intelligence. In a recent statement, Araoz emphasized that all DeFi platforms should now be considered unsafe due to AI’s enhanced ability to uncover vulnerabilities within smart contracts.
His remarks arrive amid a dramatic decline in the total value locked in DeFi, which has dropped by over $20 billion this year. This downturn is compounded by a worrying trend of hacking incidents, with approximately $1.1 billion lost to breaches in the past year alone, including significant attacks on Kelp DAO and Step Finance.
"Coding agents are superhuman at finding vulnerabilities, and smart contract security is too asymmetric: defenders need to fix every bug while attackers need just one exploit to steal funds," Araoz stated in a post on X.
Araoz's concerns are echoed by warnings from Anthropic regarding its Claude Mythos AI model, which reportedly surpasses existing tools in identifying software vulnerabilities and devising attacks. This technological evolution threatens to outpace traditional defenses in the DeFi landscape, transforming what was once a strength—transparency of code—into a potential liability.
