Morning Minute is a every day e-newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The evaluation and opinions expressed are his personal and don’t essentially mirror these of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.
GM!
Right this moment’s prime information:
- Crypto majors fall 1-2% amidst Iran escalations; BTC at $66.6k
- Coinbase’s Base introduced it’s dropping the OP stack for its personal unified consumer (OP -23%)
- Brian Armstrong known as the looming quantum threat a “solvable concern” for crypto
- Hyperliquid launched its Hyperliquid Coverage Heart with $29M for DC advocacy
- MegaETH launched its World Markets as first DEX to unify spot buying and selling, lending and perps all onchain with cross margin
🖥️ OpenAI and Paradigm Flip Focus to Sensible Contracts
Sensible contracts have misplaced billions to exploits.
Now the world’s strongest AI lab and crypto’s most revered analysis agency are constructing the instruments to finish that.
📌 What Occurred
OpenAI and Paradigm collectively launched EVMbench yesterday, an open benchmarking framework that evaluates AI brokers throughout three modes:
- detecting vulnerabilities in Ethereum sensible contracts
- patching them
- actively exploiting them.
The benchmark attracts on 120 curated high-severity vulnerabilities pulled from 40 real-world audits, largely sourced from Code4rena aggressive audit contests. It additionally contains eventualities from the safety audit of Stripe’s Tempo, the payments-focused L1 constructed with enter from Visa, Shopify, and OpenAI.
When Paradigm began this challenge, prime fashions might exploit fewer than 20% of essential bugs. That quantity is now above 70%.
OpenAI additionally expanded the personal beta of Aardvark, its devoted safety analysis agent, and dedicated $10M in API credit by way of its Cybersecurity Grant Program to help defensive crypto analysis.
🗣️ What They’re Saying
Paradigm, from their EVMbench launch: “It’s now clear to us {that a} rising portion of audits sooner or later will probably be performed by brokers. Hopefully this benchmark, harness, and agent serve each as a preview and an accelerant in the direction of that future.”
OpenAI famous that measuring AI efficiency in “economically related environments is essential as fashions turn out to be highly effective instruments for each attackers and defenders.”
Introducing EVMbench—a brand new benchmark that measures how properly AI brokers can detect, exploit, and patch high-severity sensible contract vulnerabilities. https://t.co/op5zufgAGH
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 18, 2026
🧠 Why It Issues
Sensible contract exploits have drained over $5B from DeFi within the final two years alone.
EVMbench is OpenAI and Paradigm’s transfer to cease the drain.
The irony?
The identical functionality that makes EVMbench highly effective (AI that may discover and exploit bugs at 72% accuracy) can also be the precise risk mannequin the software defends in opposition to. Within the improper fingers, a benchmark this exact turns into a hacking playbook.
OpenAI is aware of this. The $10M Cybersecurity Grant and Aardvark enlargement shipped alongside the benchmark for a motive.
However the extra essential story here’s what this indicators concerning the maturity of the AI-crypto integration thesis.
OpenAI, arguably the largest AI lab on the planet, is formally allocating analysis sources to Ethereum safety. They co-authored this with Paradigm and grounded it in real-world stablecoin infrastructure like Stripe’s Tempo.
This is likely one of the most significant integrations between these two worlds up to now.
And don’t count on it to be the final…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
- Crypto majors are barely crimson down 1-2%; BTC -1% at $66.6K; ETH -1% at $1,950; SOL -2% at $81; XRP -4% at $1.41
- No notable movers
- Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon attended the World Liberty Discussion board, informed attendees that crypto corporations rejecting the Readability Act “ought to transfer to El Salvador,” and disclosed proudly owning “little or no, however some” BTC
- NYSE President Lynn Martin mentioned the trade felt a “accountability” to enter tokenization, flagging a 24/7 blockchain buying and selling platform concentrating on launch later this yr
- California finalized DFAL licensing necessities, mandating crypto corporations get hold of a Digital Monetary Belongings Regulation license or exemption to function within the state
- Coinbase expanded its Morpho-powered crypto lending to XRP, DOGE, ADA, and LTC
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong known as the quantum threat a “solvable concern” for crypto, talking to CNBC from the WLFI Discussion board
- Apex Group ($3.5T AUM) partnered with World Liberty Monetary to pilot the Trump-backed USD1 stablecoin for fund operations
- Kraken introduced the acquisition of Magna because it prepares for IPO
- Sports activities betting-focused peer-to-peer app Novig introduced a $75M Collection B led by Pantera
- Robinhood shared that its L2 testnet processed 4M transactions in its first week
Company Treasuries & ETFs
Meme Coin Tracker
- Meme majors have been largely crimson; DOGE -2%, SHIB -4%, PEPE -4%, TRUMP -4%, PENGU -6%, SPX -7%, FARTCOIN -6%
- HOUSE (+100%) and CopperInu (+20%) led prime onchain movers on a quiet day
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
🚚 What is going on in NFTs?
- NFT leaders have been blended; Punks even at 29.9 ETH, Pudgy -2% at 4.3 ETH, BAYC +2% at 6.24 ETH; Hypurr’s -4% at 500 HYPE
- Kodas (+5%) and Quirkies (+6%) led prime movers
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