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Blockchain and Smart Contract Generation

5 min read
Low Level

Low Level

AI can draft contracts. Security and economic logic are irreplaceably human. Audit everything.

Blockchain and Smart Contract Generation

TL;DR

  • AI can draft Solidity, Rust (for Solana), or other contract code. It will introduce vulnerabilities, economic bugs, and reentrancy issues.
  • Use AI for scaffolding. Audit every line. Use formal tools. Assume AI output is hostile until proven otherwise.
  • Smart contracts are immutable and financially consequential. The cost of a bug is measured in lost funds. No exceptions.

Smart contracts are money. A bug isn't a crash — it's drained wallets. AI can generate contract code quickly. It can also generate code that looks right and is catastrophically wrong. Reentrancy, overflow, access control, oracle manipulation — AI has been trained on vulnerable code too. Your job: use AI for speed, treat every output as untrusted.

What AI Can Help With

Scaffolding:

  • "Implement an ERC-20 token" or "Create a simple NFT contract." AI can draft. You audit.
  • Good for boilerplate structure. Not for production logic.

Explanation:

  • "What does this modifier do?" "Explain this assembly block." AI can clarify. Verify against docs.
  • Useful for learning and code review. Don't trust for security decisions.

Testing ideas:

  • "What edge cases should I test?" AI can suggest. You implement. You run them.
  • Fuzzing, invariant testing — AI can suggest strategies. You execute.

What AI Gets Wrong (Dangerously)

Security:

  • Reentrancy, unchecked external calls, integer overflow. AI has seen vulnerable patterns. It will reproduce them.
  • Never deploy AI-generated contract code without audit. Ideally, multiple audits.

Economic logic:

  • Token economics, fee structures, incentive alignment. AI doesn't understand game theory or your design. It can suggest something that's trivially exploitable.
  • You own the economic design. You verify the implementation matches.

Upgradeability and governance:

  • Proxy patterns, upgrade mechanisms, admin keys. AI can draft. It will miss edge cases. A wrong admin key or bad upgrade path = game over.
  • Design these carefully. Human-only.

Gas optimization:

  • AI might suggest optimizations that change behavior or introduce vulnerabilities. "Fewer storage reads" can mean "wrong state."
  • Optimize only after correctness is proven.

The Workflow

  1. Draft with AI — Only for non-critical or clearly isolated logic. Or for learning.
  2. Audit — Line by line. Assume malice. Use static analyzers (Slither, Mythril). Run tests. Fuzz.
  3. Review economics — Does the incentive structure make sense? Can someone extract value unfairly?
  4. Test on testnet — Extensive. With adversarial scenarios. Then consider mainnet. Maybe.

Your Responsibility

  • Security is non-negotiable. One vulnerability can drain everything. There's no "we'll fix it in the next release" for immutable contracts.
  • Don't deploy under pressure. "Ship fast" and "smart contracts" don't mix. Take the time. Audit. Re-audit.
  • Educate. If your org uses AI for contracts, make sure everyone knows: AI output is untrusted. Always. No shortcuts.

Manual process. Repetitive tasks. Limited scale.

Click "With AI" to see the difference →

Quick Check

What remains human when AI automates more of this role?

Do This Next

  1. Run one AI-generated contract through Slither — See what it finds. Document the issues. That's your "AI contract checklist."
  2. Create an "AI contract" policy — No deployment without audit. No economic logic from AI without human design review. Write it down. Enforce it.
  3. Learn one new audit technique — Fuzzing, formal verification, or static analysis. Add it to your toolkit. AI can't replace thoroughness.