When AI Makes DeFi Exploits Profitable: The $6,000 Threshold That Changes Everything

AI agents have fundamentally shifted DeFi's security economics. Autonomous exploit systems powered by frontier models can now discover and exploit 55-65% of known smart contract vulnerabilities, creating an unprecedented 10:1 cost asymmetry where attacks become profitable at $6,000 while effective defense requires $60,000. This represents a critical inflection point where automated hacking transitions from experimental threat to economically viable attack vector.