Former OpenZeppelin CTO Warns AI Coding Agents Have Made DeFi Unsafe on May 27

On May 27, Manuel Aráoz, former chief technology officer at OpenZeppelin, warned that artificial intelligence coding agents have made decentralised finance fundamentally unsafe. Aráoz argued that AI can identify vulnerabilities in publicly available smart contract code faster than developers can patch them, creating an asymmetric security imbalance.

The warning coincides with mounting DeFi losses. According to DefiLlama, over $1.1 billion has been lost to DeFi exploits in the past 365 days, with April 2026 alone recording $600 million in protocol losses, including $292 million from KelpDAO, $285 million from Drift, and $197 million from Euler. OpenZeppelin responded by stating that its security work remains essential and that AI-assisted monitoring provides the best defence against emerging threats.