OpenZeppelin Co-Founder: Exit DeFi Now as AI Supercharges…

Manuel Aráoz, co-founder and former CTO of OpenZeppelin, issued a stark warning on May 27: investors should exit DeFi positions entirely, including exposure to established protocols like Aave, MakerDAO, and Compound. His core argument is structural — AI coding agents are now superhuman at finding smart contract vulnerabilities, and the asymmetry between attackers and defenders has become too severe. Defenders must patch every bug; attackers need just one.

The warning lands against a brutal backdrop. DeFi has lost more than $1.1 billion to exploits over the past year, with April alone accounting for $635 million across 28 hacks. Total value locked has fallen from roughly $172 billion in mid-April to $148 billion, marking five consecutive weeks of outflows.