DeFi Security Illusion

The article argues that most DeFi security relies on friction-based defenses such as multisigs, timelocks and audits, which do not stop the human and infrastructure attacks behind most losses, and that AI is making this gap worse. It cites $3.4 billion stolen in 2025, with access control failures accounting for 59% of that. Drift Protocol lost $285M in April 2026 after a six-month infiltration compromised two of five Security Council signers, and 31 transactions drained the protocol in about 12 minutes. The author concludes that hard-barrier approaches such as formal verification, ZK-based access control and hardware enclaves, combined with friction, are the direction the data supports.