Urbelis said he believes AI could eventually reshape the standard of care around smart contract development. Historically, teams could point to the cost and complexity of audits as a reason certain reviews were not performed. That argument becomes more difficult when sophisticated security analysis is available on demand.

“A clean AI report will be seen as no defense,” he said. “A plaintiff may well argue it the other way: the tool existed, it was cheap, and you should have caught it.”

The prospect raises broader questions for the industry: if AI-powered security reviews become ubiquitous, will investors expect them before funding projects, and could failing to run AI-assisted audits eventually be viewed as negligence?

Despite the…