“We've been running coordinated AI agents against the kinds of systems the network depends on, like systems software, cryptographic code, and contracts that have to be right,” the researchers wrote. “The agents found real bugs.”
Human researchers have traditionally searched for vulnerabilities by reviewing code manually—but AI agents can scan entire codebases, test potential exploits, and generate findings for review.
“Agents finding bugs wasn't the surprise,” the team wrote. “The surprise was how little of the work went into finding them, and how much went into telling the real bugs from the ones that just looked real.”
According to the Ethereum Foundation, the agents are organized into specialized roles, including reconnaissance, hunting, gap-filling, and validation. Some search for possible attack paths, while others attempt to reproduce failures and verify whether they work against production code.
“The schema is there for a reason,” they wrote. “It forces a specific, testable claim and a clear definition of done. An agent that has to write down an observable proof can't fall back on "this looks risky."
But detailed does not always mean correct. AI-generated findings can appear convincing even when they are wrong, leaving researchers to filter out duplicates, false positives, and vulnerabilities that cannot actually be exploited.
"One rule matters more than any other. A candidate isn't a finding until there's a self-contained artifact that reproduces the failure against the real code, and that runs for someone who didn't write it," the researchers wrote. "The reproducer doesn't read the write-up, and it doesn't care how confident the model sounded. It either runs or it doesn't."
AI tools have already helped security researchers uncover flaws in blockchain networks.
The Ethereum Foundation’s experiment brings the technology in-house, using AI agents to test its own code to find vulnerabilities.
“AI didn't replace the security researcher. It moved the work,” the Ethereum Foundation said. “Agents let us cover far more ground than we could by hand. In exchange, they ask for more careful judgment, across a much bigger pile of confident-sounding claims.”
“That's a trade worth making,” they added, “as long as you remember that the judgment is the real product.”
