Key Takeaways
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AI Exploitation Outpaces Defense: Early results show a "security gap." OpenAI’s GPT-5.3-Codex achieved a staggering 72.2% success rate in exploit mode, but only fixed about 41.5% of those same bugs correctly. AI is currently a better hacker than it is a doctor.
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Real-World Stakes: Unlike synthetic benchmarks, EVMbench uses production-grade code, including complex scenarios from the Tempo blockchain. This ensures the AI is being tested on "live-fire" scenarios where logic errors can lead to millions in losses.
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A Defensive Call to Action: Along with the benchmark, OpenAI committed $10 million in API credits for defensive cybersecurity research. The goal is to ensure that as AI grows more powerful, the "good guys" have the tools to build AI-driven automated auditors that can keep pace with AI-driven attackers.
What is EVMbench? The New AI Standard for Smart Contract Security
In the rapidly evolving world of Web3, security is no longer just a human endeavor. On February 18, 2026, OpenAI and Paradigm announced the launch of EVMbench, an open-source benchmarking framework designed to evaluate how AI agents handle the high-stakes world of Ethereum smart contract security.
As AI models like GPT-5.3-Codex become increasingly capable of writing and executing code, the industry needs a way to measure whether these agents are becoming better defenders or more dangerous attackers.
How EVMbench Works?
EVMbench isn't just a simple quiz; it's a rigorous, sandboxed stress test.() It uses a dataset of 120 high-severity vulnerabilities pulled from 40 real-world audits and security competitions (such as Code4rena).
The framework evaluates AI models across three distinct "Modes" that mirror a professional security auditor's workflow:
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Detect Mode (The Auditor)
The AI is given a smart contract repository and tasked with finding specific "ground-truth" vulnerabilities. Success is measured by recall—how many real bugs did the AI catch compared to the human experts who originally audited the code?
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Patch Mode (The Engineer)
Once a bug is found, can the AI fix it? In this mode, the agent must modify the code to remove the vulnerability.() However, there’s a catch: the "patch" must preserve original functionality.() If the AI fixes the bug but breaks the contract’s primary features, it fails.
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Exploit Mode (The Red Teamer)
This is the most "realistic" setting. In a local, sandboxed Ethereum environment (using a tool called Anvil), the AI must successfully execute a fund-draining attack. The benchmark programmatically checks if the "attacker" actually succeeded in moving simulated funds.
FAQs for EVMbench
Does EVMbench use real money or live networks?
No. EVMbench runs in a completely isolated, local environment. It uses a "containerized" version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, meaning AI agents can attempt to "drain funds" without any real-world financial risk or legal consequences.
Why did OpenAI and Paradigm release this?
To create a "standardized yardstick" for AI security. By open-sourcing the benchmark, they are allowing the entire crypto community to track AI capabilities and encouraging developers to build AI-assisted auditing tools before malicious actors can weaponize the technology.
Can AI agents now replace human smart contract auditors?
Not yet. While AI is excellent at finding specific "needle-in-a-haystack" bugs when given hints, it still struggles with comprehensive audits of entire ecosystems. Human oversight is still the "final boss" of smart contract security.
What is the "Vibe-Coding" risk mentioned in these reports?
"Vibe-coding" refers to developers using AI to generate code quickly and deploying it without deep manual review. Recent exploits (like the $1.78M Moonwell incident) show that when humans "rubber-stamp" AI code too fast, critical logic errors can slip through to the mainnet.
How can I use EVMbench to test my own AI agents?
The entire framework is open-source and available on GitHub. Developers can download the dataset, set up a local Docker/Anvil environment, and run their own agents through the Detect, Patch, and Exploit pipelines.