Illia Polosukhin pointed to the October Balancer incident as an early sign of AI-assisted hacking and tied the security shift to NEAR upgrades including quantum-resistant account keys and automatic network scaling.
NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin said AI is rapidly increasing hackers’ ability to find software vulnerabilities, leaving traditional human-led code review unable to keep pace. He pointed to the October Balancer incident as the start of AI-assisted hacking and argued the response is to use AI to speed formal verification, a mathematical method used to prove software behaves as intended. His comments came as NEAR released upgrades including quantum-resistant account keys and automatic network scaling, linking the security discussion to broader efforts to harden blockchain infrastructure as attackers adopt more automated tools.