OpenAI Evaluates AI Agents on Smart Contract Security
By: Eliza Bennet
OpenAI, in collaboration with crypto investment firm Paradigm and crypto security firm OtterSec, has launched an innovative benchmark named EVMbench. This initiative aims to assess how well various AI models can detect, patch, and possibly exploit security vulnerabilities in cryptocurrency smart contracts. As the adoption of AI agents continues to expand, it is crucial to evaluate their performance in economically meaningful environments, emphasizing the importance placed by OpenAI on this benchmark.
The EVMbench benchmark evaluates the theoretical capability of AI agents against 120 identified smart contract vulnerabilities. These tests are crucial in understanding not only how AI models can address prevailing security issues but also how they might exploit them, thus ensuring comprehensive evaluation criteria. The collaboration highlights the growing intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies, demonstrating the need for robust and secure smart contracts in an increasingly digitized financial world.
Among those evaluated, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 emerged as the leading AI model, achieving an impressive average "detect award" of $37,824. This was followed by OpenAI’s own OC-GPT-5.2 and Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, with average detect awards of $31,623 and $25,112 respectively. Such financial metrics provide a tangible measure of the models' effectiveness, underscoring the potential economic implications of AI in blockchain security. The results from this benchmark signify a significant step forward in utilizing AI for financial and contractual security in digital frameworks.
The focus on smart contract security evaluation by OpenAI, Paradigm, and OtterSec demonstrates a proactive approach in addressing the security challenges posed by the rapid integration of AI into cryptocurrency ecosystems. As AI technologies mature, this initiative sets a precedent for continuous improvement and strategic deployment in securing blockchain technologies, a development that is critical for maintaining trust and safeguarding digital assets.
