Immy Dorse 
Remember the ByBit hack back in February? It’s one of those moments that makes you pause. Attackers found a way to exploit blind-signing in Ledger devices and slipped malicious code into Safe Wallet’s interface. People approved transactions they thought were safe. Millions gone, just like that.
It was a harsh reminder. Even the tools we trust the most can have weak spots—centralized points of failure hidden behind a veneer of security.
It’s Not Really Decentralized, Is It?
A lot of what we call DeFi right now feels like performance art. Smart contracts look impressive, but behind the scenes, it’s a different story. They’re often propped up by AWS servers, bots, and admin keys. It’s not really autonomous. It’s reactive. These contracts just sit there, waiting. Waiting for an oracle to feed them data, for a keeper to trigger them, for someone somewhere to push a button.
Vitalik Buterin talked about this not long after the hack. He said if we trade away openness, or privacy, or censorship resistance for convenience, we lose what makes this whole thing meaningful. I think he’s right. We’re building stages instead of foundations.
The Problem with Waiting
The core issue is that smart contracts can’t do anything on their own. They need to be told what to do. A lending protocol can’t liquidate a position by itself—it has to wait for a bot to notice and do it. A DEX can’t rebalance its pools automatically. It relies on external networks, which themselves can become points of control, or failure.
This creates a weird paradox. We’re building systems to remove trust, but then we reintroduce it through the back door with these off-chain dependencies. It’s not just inefficient; it’s risky.
A Glimpse of Something Different
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are projects trying to change the script. They’re working on what you might call self-executing applications. Think lending that liquidates on its own, or DEXes that rebalance without a middleman.
This is done through on-chain schedulers and autonomous smart contracts. Tech from projects like Massa, Olas, and MUD is making this possible. The idea is to build apps that can actually operate independently, 24/7, without needing that off-chain crew to keep the lights on.
It’s a shift from building reactive databases to creating active, living systems. It feels closer to the original promise—real autonomy, fewer points of failure, and maybe, just maybe, a way out of this theater we’ve built for ourselves.
