AI Will Expose Weak Crypto Projects as Security Standards Rise, Helius CEO Warns

Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz says crypto is heading into a harsher security era, where AI will expose weak projects, fake decentralization, and sloppy smart contract design.

• AI is raising the security bar for crypto and DeFi, not just the attack surface.
• Immutable financial code needs far more rigor than standard web software.
• “Straw houses” with admin keys and brittle governance are likely to get exposed.
• Formal verification, auditing, and fuzzing may become the baseline for serious builders.

Mumtaz argues that crypto is entering a phase where security theater won’t cut it anymore. In his view, artificial intelligence and formal verification are about to separate the real builders from the usual parade of overpromising token jockeys and half-baked protocols pretending they’re one audit away from greatness.

“Crypto is about to enter the space age.”

That sounds dramatic, but the point is grounded in a very unglamorous truth: crypto systems handle real money, are often immutable once deployed, and are attacked in hostile, open environments. If a normal web app breaks, you roll out a fix. If a smart contract or protocol gets exploited, users can be drained in minutes and the damage can be permanent. That’s not a minor bug. That’s financial napalm.

Mumtaz compares immutable financial code to a spaceship leaving Earth.

“Immutable financial code is akin to a spaceship leaving Earth that you have no further control over. It must work, or there will be catastrophe.”

He’s right, and crypto has spent far too many years pretending otherwise. Too many teams still build like they’re shipping a consumer app, then act shocked when adversarial conditions expose every weak assumption in the stack. “Move fast and break things” is a cute slogan for social media products. In decentralized finance, it’s a direct path to getting rekt.

Crypto’s software crisis is here

Mumtaz reaches back to the late 1960s and the old idea of the “software crisis,” when computing complexity started outrunning the ability of humans to reliably manage it. The lesson was simple: once software gets serious enough, brute-force testing and vibes are not enough. You need rigor. You need proofs. You need systems that can be reasoned about, not just hoped into existence.

That lesson applies to crypto with extra force because the stakes are higher and the environment is more hostile. A payments app can tolerate a few patch cycles. A smart contract that controls millions in deposits cannot. One bad line of code, one bad assumption, one rushed upgrade, and the whole thing can turn into a very expensive crime scene.

To make the point even sharper, Mumtaz says too many crypto projects rely on development practices fit for ordinary web apps, when they really need aviation- or spaceflight-level reliability. That’s not poetic exaggeration. It’s a warning that crypto security must be treated like critical infrastructure, not startup cosplay with a token attached.

Fake decentralization is still a massive problem

Mumtaz also takes aim at what he calls the “facade of decentralization.” That’s a polite way of saying many supposedly trustless systems still depend on trust in all the usual places: admin keys, controlled validator sets, social coordination, and emergency intervention by a small group of insiders.

In plain English, if a project can be rescued by a handful of privileged operators, then it is not as decentralized as the marketing deck claims. It may be distributed. It may be permissionless on paper. But if the real power sits behind a few keyholders and a governance process that can be massaged when things go wrong, the “decentralization” label starts looking like marketing fluff with better typography.

That matters because the crypto sector often sells users on trust minimization, yet quietly leans on human discretion when pressure hits. The tension between idealized decentralization and practical control is one of the industry’s least-discussed weak points. AI won’t create that problem, but it will make it harder to hide.

AI could become the best crypto auditor ever built

There’s a silver lining in all this, and Mumtaz isn’t blind to it. He thinks AI will dramatically improve the tools used to secure crypto systems, especially around specification writing, proof assistance, symbolic reasoning, fuzzing, audits, invariant checking, and formal verification.

For readers who don’t speak security-engineer: AI-assisted auditing means using machine systems to help scan code, flag suspicious logic, and speed up review work that would take humans much longer. Symbolic reasoning is a way of analyzing code by tracking variables and paths mathematically rather than by only running the program with test inputs. Fuzzing means throwing weird, random, or malformed inputs at software to find failure points. Invariant checking looks for rules that should always remain true, such as a vault never allowing balances to go negative or a protocol never minting assets out of thin air.

Formal verification sits at the top of that pile. It uses mathematical logic to prove that software behaves the way it should. That’s a big deal in crypto because testing can show that bugs exist, but it cannot prove that hidden bugs do not. Or as the old computer science line goes: testing can reveal the presence of bugs, not their absence.

“The silver lining is that AI will greatly streamline the process of formal verification and making programs more rigorous.”

That is probably the most important bullish angle here. AI could lower the cost and complexity of serious crypto security, making it easier for builders to create systems that are actually robust instead of merely branded as robust. If that happens, the industry could finally move beyond the current stage of “we audited it, trust us” and into something closer to “we proved it, or at least got a lot closer.”

But let’s not get drunk on our own optimism. AI is not magic. It does not automatically understand intent, economic edge cases, or governance failure modes. It can help produce better proofs and better reviews, but humans still have to define the rules. Garbage specifications in, garbage confidence out. The machine may be brilliant, but it can’t save a stupid design from itself.

AI also hands attackers sharper knives

The other side of the coin is obvious and ugly: the same AI capabilities that help defenders can also help attackers. That means faster vulnerability discovery, quicker exploit development, and more automated probing of smart contracts and DeFi protocols.

DeFi is especially exposed because its code is public, its incentives are adversarial, and its money is usually live from day one. If there’s a flaw, attackers don’t need permission, paperwork, or a meeting with legal. They just need a way in. AI makes that search cheaper, faster, and more scalable.

This is the real arms race. Better tools for honest engineers can also become better tools for thieves. Crypto has always lived in a hostile environment, but AI raises the tempo. Projects with weak architecture, sloppy testing, or handshake-level security are about to find out that the internet is not a safe neighborhood and never was.

That’s why Mumtaz believes the next few years will bring an “aggressive natural selection mechanism” in crypto. Strong teams, he argues, will get stronger because they’re building systems that can survive serious scrutiny. Weak teams will get exposed, and fast.

“This set of circumstances will lead to crypto reaching its ultimate potential, but I suspect only through trial by fire.”

That’s a fair read of where things are going. There is a brutal upside to harder standards: they force the industry to mature. The downside is that a lot of lazy code, fake engineering, and hype-driven projects won’t survive contact with reality. Good riddance.

The next competition is correctness, not just speed

For years, crypto projects have competed on throughput, liquidity, token distribution, user growth, and ecosystem heat. Those things still matter. But Mumtaz says the next major competition may be about correctness and security. That’s a much less sexy race, which is probably why it’s the one that actually matters.

That shift should be welcome. The sector has long been too comfortable rewarding loudness over rigor. AI changes the economics of attack and defense, which means serious crypto builders will need to think more like aerospace engineers than startup influencers. Less swagger, more proof. Less “trust the roadmap,” more “show me the invariants.”

He wants crypto to become “demonstrably safer, more robust, and more Lindy than any centralized financial system.” Lindy, for anyone new to the term, is the idea that the longer something has survived, the more likely it is to keep surviving. In other words, Mumtaz is not asking for crypto to just be flashy or fast. He wants it to be durable enough to outlast the financial systems it’s trying to replace.

“I am long math and I am long crypto.”

That’s a clean thesis. Crypto does not need more performance art. It needs more math, more discipline, and fewer projects built like a straw house with a governance token on top.

Why this matters now

The timing is hard to ignore. Mumtaz’s comments landed shortly after Anthropic’s June 9 release of Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, a reminder that advanced AI is no longer theoretical. Anthropic said Fable 5 is its most capable generally available model, while Mythos 5 is being limited at first to selected cyberdefenders and infrastructure providers through Project Glasswing with the US government.

That controlled rollout says a lot. If a model is powerful enough to help defend infrastructure, it is also powerful enough to make offensive security work more efficient. In other words: the tools are getting sharper on both sides of the knife. Crypto projects that still treat security like a box to tick will be in for a rude awakening.

The total crypto market cap was $2.12 trillion at press time, which is a reminder that this sector is still massive, still relevant, and still carrying an uncomfortable amount of brittle code under the hood. Big money does not equal strong foundations. Sometimes it just means the cracks are more expensive.

What crypto builders should take from this

For serious teams, the message is straightforward: treat security as a first-order design problem, not a post-launch cleanup task. That means tighter specs, better audits, more formal verification, better use of AI-assisted auditing tools, and far less dependence on emergency governance hacks that expose how centralized a system really is.

For users, the takeaway is equally blunt. Don’t be hypnotized by TVL, flashy partnerships, or a project’s tribal fan base. Ask the boring questions. Who can upgrade the code? Who holds the keys? What happens if the system breaks? Was this actually proven secure, or just “reviewed” by a firm with a nice logo and a LinkedIn page?

Mumtaz’s point is not that crypto is doomed. It’s that the era of easy excuses is ending. AI will make both the good guys and the bad guys better. The protocols that survive will be the ones that can stand up to machine-augmented scrutiny without falling apart. The rest? Straw houses tend to do what straw houses do.

• What is Mumtaz warning about?
  He says crypto is entering a phase where AI and higher security expectations will expose weak projects, brittle code, and fake decentralization.
• Why compare crypto code to a spaceship?
  Because immutable financial code can’t be casually repaired after launch. If it fails, the consequences can be catastrophic and irreversible.
• What is formal verification in crypto?
  It’s a mathematical way of proving that software behaves as intended, rather than relying only on testing.
• How does AI help crypto security?
  It can speed up audits, fuzzing, symbolic reasoning, invariant checking, and proof work, making rigorous security more practical.
• Why is AI also a threat?
  The same tools that help defenders can help attackers find and exploit smart contract vulnerabilities faster, especially in DeFi.
• What does “facade of decentralization” mean?
  It refers to systems that claim to be decentralized but still rely on admin keys, controlled validators, or human rescue paths.
• Will AI make crypto safer?
  Probably, but only for projects that use it responsibly. AI can improve security, yet it can also create false confidence if the underlying design is weak.
• Is this bullish for crypto?
  Yes, but selectively. It’s bullish for disciplined builders and harsh on lazy projects, sloppy DeFi, and security theater.