In 2026, many people referred to this year as the inaugural year of Agentic Finance. Through OpenClaw, agents can automatically arbitrage, trade, and execute complex DeFi operations, seemingly becoming personal money printers for users.

However, the fantasy shattered quickly.

In February, OpenAI employee Nik Pash developed a cryptocurrency trading AI agent "Lobstar Wilde" using the OpenClaw framework. While processing a request for help from a user (who needed only 4 SOL for medical expenses), a quantity parsing error caused it to transfer its entire holding of 52.43 million LOBSTAR tokens at once.

At the time, the market value was about $250,000, and after the subsequent rise in token prices, the value approached $600,000. Within 15 minutes of the transfer, all tokens were sold, cashing out approximately $40,000. However, the overall loss reached hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was a typical case of uncontrolled autonomous execution by AI: it was not a hacker intrusion nor a smart contract vulnerability, but rather the agent "misunderstood" and sent all the money out.

The black market quickly copied this logic. According to media reports, malicious actors exploited OpenClaw's command execution characteristics to lure AI into autonomously completing wallet transfers using simple language. Users have reported being "unintentionally robbed of hundreds of thousands of assets," including stablecoins like USDT, with transaction records difficult to trace. Once authorized, they are almost impossible to recover. The Internet Finance Association of China even issued a notice listing "fund loss risk" as one of the four core risks of OpenClaw, explicitly stating that malicious attackers could directly steal user funds under high permissions.

This is not a bug in a specific smart contract; it is a systemic risk in the agent's operating environment. A single parsing error, a message disguised as a normal command, can enable the agent to make irreversible on-chain operations that clear everything.

Agents are becoming increasingly active on-chain, but the infrastructure to protect them is still far from ready.

The market is racing, and so are the accidents

At the beginning of 2026, the daily active AI agents on-chain surpassed 250,000, a year-on-year increase of over 400%. 68% of new DeFi protocols have built-in autonomous AI agents. The global AI agent market is expected to grow from $7.84 billion to $52.62 billion, with a CAGR of 46.3%. Analysts predict that by the end of the year, AI agents could account for 30% of on-chain transaction volume.

Now let's take a look at the accident side:

• In November 2024, a user asked ChatGPT to help write a Pump.fun trading bot, and the AI recommended a phishing API. 30 minutes later, the wallet was emptied, resulting in a loss of $2,500. In the same month, the trading terminal DEXX was hacked due to plaintext key custody, with approximately $21 million stolen, nearly a thousand people affected, and compensation still far off.

• At the end of 2025, the DeBot wallet used for trading bots was suspected to be hacked, with 250,000 USDT quickly transferred.

• In March 2026, the litellm library commonly used by AI developers (with 95 million downloads per month) was poisoned in the supply chain, and malicious code automatically stole cryptocurrency wallets and cloud credentials, with Karpathy personally posting a warning.

The cases are very fragmented, but there is one core issue they point to:

From script bots to agent trading, a more mature wallet infrastructure is needed. In a field expected to be worth tens of billions of dollars over the next few years, most competitors have chosen to swim naked for convenience.

This is the reality we see. It is also the issue we hope to address together with many leaders in the Web3 security industry.

What is Claw Wallet?

If Metamask represents wallets for consumers and Privy represents wallets for businesses, then Claw Wallet aims to be the best wallet for agents: a payment infrastructure that fully supports autonomous agent activities while ensuring safety.

• Sharded Isolation: Isolating private keys is a basic operation. But Claw Wallet goes further—by using proven key sharding technology, assets are managed jointly by the agent, risk control strategies, and users, along with redundant backups for additional disaster recovery.

• Interaction Security: Users can customize risk control plans, allowing precise control over sending addresses, interaction addresses, amounts, transaction frequencies, and signature strategies. Non-professional users need not worry—strict default schemes will automatically intercept malicious contracts and phishing signatures.

• User-Friendly: Supports various creation methods, agents can be installed independently with one click or conveniently bound to human users. For high-frequency trading and information scraping scenarios, it offers fully automated modes and SDKs, enabling advanced users to quickly integrate in various contexts.

Why do we take on harder tasks?

To be honest, many wallets currently simply give the private key directly to the agent and add a whitelist. We strongly advise against using these solutions.

Some wallets that prioritize security at least perform key isolation and sandbox execution, a direction we largely agree with. But it is still not enough for us.

The reason is simple: Agent behavior is dynamic.

It does not repeat the same operations daily; it makes different decisions based on the market environment, on-chain status, and strategic parameters. A carefully constructed malicious contract can easily bypass the constraints of static rules.

Private key security is just the most basic aspect. Dynamic interaction security is the core that determines whether the agent can cover asset losses.

Claw Wallet chooses to implement risk control at the strategic level—understanding the contextual behavior of agents and judging whether a transaction is reasonable before execution. It is not about stopping losses after the fact but preventing them beforehand.

Technically, the private key is split into multiple encrypted shards, held by sandbox, backend, and user-side security processes. Any signature operation must satisfy two conditions simultaneously: policy check approval + user confirmation.

In simple terms: No matter how fast your agent runs outside, its keys are always in your hands.

Different scenarios, different protections

Claw Wallet is not a one-size-fits-all solution. For the most active on-chain scenarios for agents, we have designed targeted solutions:

• DeFi Yield Automation: Agents transport funds across various protocols to maximize yields, with risks stemming from excessive authorization and contract vulnerabilities. Claw Wallet's approach: refined risk control + abnormal behavior halting, where agents can only operate within the approved protocol range, and deviations immediately pause their actions.

• Perpetual Contracts/Automated Trading: This requires extremely high security for private keys; losses can occur within seconds if compromised. Claw Wallet adopts isolated key management, ensuring private keys are not stored in plaintext or transmitted in plaintext, and signatures are completed in a controlled environment.

• Cross-Chain Asset Operations: Bridging contracts are a frequent source of security incidents. Claw Wallet identifies transaction intents before signatures and automatically intercepts known malicious contracts and suspicious signature requests.

• On-Chain Micropayments/Agent Settlements: The risk of high-frequency small transactions comes from "subliminal losses," where each transaction is small, but they accumulate over time. Claw Wallet provides real-time monitoring and threshold alerts, triggering immediate notifications for abnormal frequencies or abnormal flows.

It's time

Every day, over 250,000 active agents are running on the blockchain, moving real funds and generating real revenue. This number is still accelerating.

But growth does not equal maturity. An agent without security guarantees is not helping you create value; it is helping you accumulate risk.

You spent time training it, configuring it, and teaching it to make money on-chain—now it's time to give it a truly safe home.

Today, Claw Wallet officially goes live.

Official Installation:https://www.clawwallet.cc

Currently, Claw Wallet has established deep collaborations with several institutions, including PIN AI, 0G Labs, Haedal, Navi Protocol, and Clawdi, dedicated to comprehensively safeguarding the on-chain security of AI agents.

Let your agent take Claw Wallet and set off with confidence.

About Claw Wallet

A truly secure wallet built for AI agents

Claw Wallet is a professional Web3 security wallet tailored for AI agents, supporting self-hosted multi-chain wallet deployment in 3 seconds, ensuring the safe use of cryptocurrency assets within authorized limits through a strategic risk control engine, specifically designed for high-risk on-chain agent workflow scenarios.