The Real Reason Behind Most DeFi Hacks

a16z crypto show

Andreessen Horowitz

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4.4 • 66 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Following major DeFi exploits, a16z crypto GP Eddy Lazzarin and security engineer Matt Gleason break down the recent surge in crypto hacks. Their argument: AI isn't creating new vulnerabilities—it's making existing ones easier to exploit. They explore whether defenders can evolve as fast as attackers, the role of geopolitics in cyber activity, and what users can do to stay safe online.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Anthropic has been out there talking about the devastation to be wrought by its product mythos.
0:05.6	The fact that people are so afraid of AI is completely backwards. I have great respect for Anthropic,
0:12.0	but I do think that there is a degree of doomsday marketing here. The classes of harms that they think
0:17.9	would be happening aren't happening. It isn't that we were secure and now we're not. It's we were never secure. We just didn't know it yet. If I had a thing and I heard it got hacked. The first thing I think is, man, I wish I used more AI to find the problems. If there was no AI and they had a super genius hiding in a mountain in North Korea and he had 300 IQ and he's breaking everything with his
0:38.1	gigabrain power. That would be terrifying. Defy hacks has been running rampant throughout the
0:43.7	industry over the past month. What can people do to secure themselves? Well, I think...
1:01.4	All right. Hey and welcome everybody. We're here with Eddie Lazaran, General Partner at A16Z Crypto, and Matt Gleason, senior security engineer, also here at A16Z Crypto. And today we're
1:07.0	talking about the spate of defy hacks that has been running rampant throughout
1:12.5	the industry over the past month.
1:14.5	There have been almost as many hacks as there are days in April, in April.
1:22.1	About $635 million lost in total.
1:26.7	What's going on? This is a huge uptick in security incidents,
1:31.3	in hackings, in money lost. Why is this happening right now? So in general, we've seen an
1:38.9	uptick in general cyber activity throughout the beginning of this year. So the impetus there being kind of more
1:46.4	capabilities, also some geopolitical tension stuff. And then we've seen market upticks after the U.S.
1:53.5	invasion in Iran, specifically at critical infrastructure and some financially motivated attacks.
2:00.5	And so this may just be kind of a fruition of kind of two lines of thinking,
2:06.7	which is attackers have increased their own capability with some of the AI models,
2:12.2	specifically probably honestly, the AI models hosted in China or hosted locally that are being released by China,
2:18.6	as well as just geopolitical tensions being at such a fever pitch that more of our adversaries
2:25.9	are more willing to be more brazen to kind of fight back. It's a retaliatory effort.
2:33.0	It's very hard to say, and that's because often the
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