Below are guest posts and opinions from Matej Janež, Oasis’s Head of Partnerships.
At Esdenver earlier this year, one topic continued to appear again and again: AI and autonomy AI Agent. That excitement passed on to other crypto conferences over the years. There is a good reason for excitement. These are no longer just ideas, they are here and dealing with real funds, but reliance on transparent blockchains can be their biggest weakness.
What exactly are these AI agents? These are smart software programs that function independently to handle specific tasks. Cryptography uses machine learning and blockchain to view markets, find patterns, and automatically make transactions. Unlike traditional trading bots, today’s AI agents are adaptable. They continuously improve their behavior based on what results are obtained.
However, there is a major problem that is underestimated and misunderstood. The fact that these on-chain agents are working on transparent blockchain essentially exposes decision-making, the “brain.” This openness creates a real obstacle for agents looking to compete in the financial markets.
defi AI agent
Currently, Defi Agent handles transactions across decentralized exchanges, manages lending and optimizes yield agriculture. They respond instantly to market changes and often make quick decisions with a lot of money. Smart. fast. Efficient.
But they face basic challenges. The very system that makes them work – the public blockchain – shows a strategy for everyone. Every transaction leaves a trail that reveals how they “think” everything about interacting with smart contracts. It’s not much different to playing poker while placing cards on the table.
Of course, you simply run these strategies on a private server and send the final transaction to the blockchain, but this fundamentally beats the purpose of Crypto’s transparency and on-chain verifiability promises. The overall point of Defi is to remove the need for a reliable third party and centralized system.
Think about what’s already happening with Defi today. Yield Agriculture Bots continuously scan the best returns between protocols and move millions between lending platforms based on subtle market shifts. If that strategy becomes visible on-chain, competitors will see which pools will enter, exit, what thresholds, what time and when they will come out, and clone the strategy without research costs. In a decentralized credit market, AI agents who earn securing loan wallets are pointless if borrowers see exactly which behaviours improve their scores and lead to artificial wallet patterns designed to game the system.
Most may be concerned Dao Financial Agent – Anyone can effectively steal from the community on a transaction-by-transaction basis if their rebalancing strategy is transparent. These are not edge cases. They are fundamental flaws in applying AI to transparent systems that cannot separate strategy implementation and strategic development.
Undoubtedly, the worst case scenario could be market manipulation. When a bad actor understands how an agent makes decisions, they can create situations designed to fool it. A market filled with transparent agents is an easy target.
Why a “personal brain”?
The “personal brain” of Defi Agent fixes these issues. By keeping calculations confidential, agents can make decisions without showing logic or intention until a transaction passes.
Security benefits are clear. Strategies remain protected from imitation. Front running becomes more difficult without looking at pending transactions. Agent work is private. Teams building better algorithms create a reason to continue improving to maintain their advantage. The market rewards real improvements instead of quick copying. On a large scale, the market becomes more stable. If the agent strategy is secret, then multiple agents avoid following the same strategy. This reduces correlated market movements and reduces overall system risk.
If we continue as we do now, if the defi agent continues to work with the glass box brain, we need to worry about some things happening.
Market exploits are more common and refined. As agents process more funds, so does their rewards of exploiting them. Without privacy measures, these exploits become simple technical exercises rather than difficult security breaches.
Strategic cannibalism is just as worrying. Once the winning strategy is copied quickly, they stop working as well. Ultimately, all agents use a similar approach to create monoculture. Markets lose diversity and resilience.
This leads to what you can do to all “hive mind” issues. If all agents function the same way, they react in the same way to market changes. This will increase the market, increase volatility, and create the risk of flash crashes when conditions cause widespread responses. What starts as individual agents essentially becomes one large entity with system-wide effects. To spell it out: These are not healthy market ingredients.
Technical Solutions
A reliable execution environment (TEES) provides a solid way to create these private brains. TEE provides a secure area where calculations occur alone and are protected from the systems that host the system. You can check that the work has occurred correctly, but details remain private.
This technology balances openness and privacy. The agent framework may be published and verifiable, but the details of specific decisions and strategies remain protected.
Not only does it add private calculations to the Defi agent, but it is necessary for algorithmic financing to grow properly. Without privacy, we are building a market where innovation is punished and exploitation is rewarded, and systemic risks are piled up beneath the surface.
We are at a critical time in AI-powered finance by choosing whether autonomous agents will create more efficient markets or dangerous and vulnerable markets. Private calculation technology exists today, but implementing it requires intentional action from builders and protocols. As financial intelligence moves more and more in the chain, by enabling these systems to operate in computational privacy, we not only protect individual strategies, but also protect the integrity of the entire system of rebellion.
