The Translation Layer: Why AI Is Necessary to Scale Decentralized Finance

Key Takeaways:

• AI agents like Coinfello automate DeFi tasks once reserved for hedge funds to manage 24/7 market risks.
• Jacob C. warns that the “translation layer” must solve oracle and agency risks for DeFi to scale safely.
• By 2030, Jacob C. predicts dapps will decline as AI agents become the primary way to use smart contracts.

The Shift to Autonomous Finance

The shift from manual interaction to artificial intelligence (AI) agents in decentralized finance (DeFi) represents the autopilot era of crypto. In the past, DeFi required users to be glued to screens, monitoring gas fees, slippage, and liquidation risks. Today, autonomous agents are taking over the heavy lifting, providing continuous monitoring that was previously available only to institutional hedge funds.

In some cases, agents can automatically pull liquidity out of a pool if they detect a rug pull pattern or if a stablecoin starts to de-peg. According to Jacob C., the co-founder and CEO of Coinfello, AI agents are also enhancing the way DeFi users interact with smart contracts.

“Before AI agents, users were required to trust a centralized intermediary website (the dapp) which pointed at the smart contract,” Jacob C. said. “They had to trust the website to honestly convey what a smart contract does, to legitimately point at the correct smart contract, and to not be hacked by a malicious third party.”

AI agents like Coinfello, Jacob C. argues, are eliminating this risk by interfacing directly with smart contracts, reading them, and explaining their risks to users. In other words, AI agents act as a translation layer that could prove vital if DeFi is to scale to levels that seem impossible now.

Nevertheless, while AI agents undeniably enhance efficiency and streamline complex workflows, they also expose systems to new vulnerabilities—most notably oracle dependency, where external data sources can distort outcomes, and a subtle erosion of human agency, as decision-making authority shifts from individuals to algorithms. The Coinfello CEO concurs, warning that users still need to be able to verify or audit an agent before completely surrendering control or access to their funds.

“Most of the AI agents that we see on the market today require users to transfer funds into a wallet fully controlled by the AI agent, and to trust that the agent will not make mistakes or will not be malicious,” the CEO said.

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To get around this problem, Jacob C. said his platform uses what he called “ liquidity sandboxing,” a concept he says enables users to approve individual permissions to the AI agent that limit which tokens the agent can access. The Coinfello team believes this approach “creates guardrails that fundamentally solve the dangers of securely using AI agents.”

Regarding the prospects of DeFi in the age of AI agents, Jacob C. foresees these agents automating actions that a user otherwise would not have time to monitor, such as dollar-cost averaging or executing personally defined trading strategies. By 2030, he predicts decentralized applications ( dApps) will decline to the point where they are no longer the primary way people use smart contracts.