AI Hacking DeFi: "Superhuman" Threat Warns Security Chief

A top security executive warns that decentralized finance, or DeFi, is no longer safe. Manuel Aráoz, CEO of OpenZeppelin, says AI coding agents are now "superhuman" at finding vulnerabilities in smart contracts. This warning comes as DeFi's total value locked has fallen by over $20 billion this year. Also, more than $1.1 billion has been lost to hacks in the past 12 months. This includes a $292 million exploit at Kelp DAO and a $27 million exploit that led to Step Finance shutting down. Powerful AI models, like Anthropic's Claude Mythos, can autonomously discover software flaws. This makes DeFi's transparent code increasingly difficult to defend at human speed. The bottom line is that the speed of AI attacks could make DeFi's transparency a major risk.