What happened
Researchers built an AI system that learns from past security audits to automatically find bugs in smart contracts—the self-executing programs that control billions in cryptocurrency. The system found all critical vulnerabilities and most medium-severity bugs in tested projects, plus discovered 22 previously unknown vulnerabilities in real-world code, suggesting it works better than existing detection tools.
Why it matters
Smart contract bugs regularly result in millions of dollars stolen from users; most vulnerabilities today are found only through expensive manual audits by specialized experts, creating a bottleneck for blockchain adoption. If this system reliably catches bugs without human auditors, it could dramatically lower the cost and timeline of deploying new cryptocurrency services.