Crypto Industry Rethinks Security Practices Amid Mythos Challenge

Network News Mythos, a new AI model, is driving a significant shift in the crypto industry's approach to security. The model, designed to identify and chain together weaknesses across systems, has sparked fear and confusion in traditional tech and finance. For years, decentralized finance has focused its defenses on smart contracts, but Mythos is pushing attention beyond code and into the infrastructure that supports it. Paul Vijender, head of security at Gauntlet, a risk management firm, said, 'The bigger risks sit in infrastructure.' Aave, one of DeFi's largest lending protocols, is at the center of a broad recovery effort following losses tied to the Kelp DAO exploit. The effort, informally dubbed 'DeFi United,' had raised about $301 million in commitments as of Monday. The exploit has prompted what is shaping up to be one of the most coordinated industry responses to a DeFi incident. Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of crypto firm Alchemy, said, 'Crypto was built for AI agents, not humans.' Viswanathan argued that the modern financial system was never designed for machines and that crypto starts to look less like an alternative financial system and more like the native infrastructure for a new kind of economic actor. Paul Sztorc is proposing a Bitcoin fork called eCash, which would copy Bitcoin's history up to a certain point and give BTC holders an equivalent balance on the forked network. The proposal has sparked controversy, with some accusing Sztorc of trying to move Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoin.