2026 FinTech Predictions: Insights from Mitchell Amador of Immunefi

I spoke with Mitchell Amador, CEO of Immunefi, the leader in Web3 security with over $180B in value protected and $25B in hack damage averted across 650+ leading protocols.

Mitchell shares his perspective on the evolving security landscape, the shift from code vulnerabilities to human-layer attacks, and why AI-versus-AI security will define competitive advantage in the years ahead.

Over to you Mitchell - my questions are in bold:

What's the biggest shift you expect across financial services in 2026?

Despite 2025 going down as the worst year for hacks on record, the industry is missing the most important detail in that almost all of that damage came from Web2 infrastructure failures and operational security breakdowns, not from on-chain code.

What we're actually seeing on the blockchain layer is the opposite trend. Smart contract security is improving at a remarkable pace, with better development patterns, stronger auditing standards, and far more mature tooling across the stack.

From the perspective of DeFi and protocol‑level engineering, I believe 2026 will be the best year yet for onchain security where the foundations are getting stronger, rather than weaker. Teams are finally treating CI/CD pipeline security as worth adopting, and we're beginning to see the early rise of capabilities like on-chain firewalling, real‑time threat intelligence, and automated exploit detection that will make a safe onchain economy possible.

The biggest shift in 2026 will be the recognition that onchain systems are becoming the safer technology base for the future of finance. As traditional financial infrastructure continues to suffer from legacy Web2 vulnerabilities, the market will increasingly turn to blockchain rails not because they are novel, but because they are demonstrably more secure.

Which emerging technology will have the most practical impact on banks and the FinTechs that support them?

Traditional banks worry about database breaches, credential theft, and wire‑fraud attacks. Blockchain‑based financial institutions face a completely different class of threats. A single smart contract vulnerability can be exploited instantly and irreversibly, and the attack surface extends far beyond your own code.

Every protocol you integrate with, every bridge you rely on, and every stablecoin you support becomes part of your attack surface. And because most of this code is public, attackers have unlimited time to study it and prepare their attack.

The emerging technology that will have the biggest practical impact is AI‑driven security that operates continuously across the entire stack. We're moving from a world where teams react to incidents after they happen, to one where intelligent systems proactively scan code, monitor live threats, and surface vulnerabilities before bad actors can exploit them. These platforms are trained on thousands of real‑world examples, giving them the ability to recognise dangerous patterns long before a human reviewer would.

But the next frontier is even more important, because it will involve extending security beyond code. It doesn't matter how perfect your contract is if a team member signs a malicious transaction or falls for a phishing attempt.

Modern AI‑driven security platforms are beginning to address this head‑on with phishing detection, impersonation alerts, incident‑response guidance, and simulation training designed to harden the human layer of defence.

The biggest practical impact for banks and fintechs will come from this shift toward proactive, intelligent, holistic security with systems that protect both the logic and the people.

What customer behaviours or expectations will most challenge banks and financial service providers?

The biggest challenge won't come from technology. It will come from human behavior.

As financial services move further onto blockchain rails, customers increasingly expect instant settlement, 24/7 access, and full self‑custody optionality. Those expectations dramatically raise the stakes for security. A single mistaken signature, a rushed approval, or a momentary lapse in judgment can lead to irreversible loss.

At the same time, attackers are becoming far more sophisticated in exploiting human weaknesses. Customers expect seamless digital experiences, but they also expect absolute safety, and those two expectations often don't align.

The real challenge for banks and fintechs in 2026 will be managing this gap between what customers want and what their own teams and systems can reliably secure. Protecting code is no longer enough. Institutions will need to invest in continuous education, behavioural safeguards, and intelligent systems that can detect and prevent human‑layer attacks in real time.

In other words, the hardest part of financial security won't be the cryptography or the infrastructure, it will actually be protecting people from themselves, and from the adversaries who know exactly how to exploit human nature.

What risks or blind spots do you think the industry is underestimating as we move into 2026?

Over the last few years, we've made real progress in hardening onchain code. Smart contracts are safer, development patterns are more mature, and the industry has finally internalised many of the lessons from the early DeFi era.

As a result, the window of opportunity for large, catastrophic protocol‑level exploits is narrowing. We're moving toward a world where onchain code is, in many cases, safer than the offchain infrastructure surrounding it.

But attackers adapt faster than defenders expect. As code becomes harder to exploit, the threat landscape is shifting decisively toward operational security failures, treasury‑level compromises, and human‑layer attacks. The industry is still underestimating how quickly this transition is happening. Again, this brings us back to the point about how the weakest link in 2026 won't be the smart contract, it will be the person operating it.

The blind spot is believing that securing code is enough which, of course, it isn't.

If we want the onchain economy to be truly resilient, we have to treat human behaviour with the same seriousness we treat smart contract architecture.

If you were advising a bank's leadership team today, what strategic priority should they focus on to stay competitive in 2026 and beyond?

The single most important strategic priority for banks in 2026 is preparing for a world where AI is driving the tempo of security on both sides of the battlefield.

Defenders are increasingly relying on AI‑driven monitoring, analysis, and response systems that operate at machine speed. At the same time, attackers are using the very same technologies to automate vulnerability discovery, accelerate hack development, and scale campaigns in ways that were impossible even a year ago.

We are entering an era of AI‑versus‑AI security operations, and institutions that aren't preparing for that shift will be outpaced almost immediately. But this evolution also introduces a new and largely underestimated attack surface in the shape of onchain AI agents. These agents can act faster than human operators and execute complex financial logic autonomously, but they are also uniquely vulnerable. If their access paths, control layers, or decision‑making inputs are compromised, the consequences can be catastrophic. We are still in the early days of understanding how to secure autonomous agents, and this will be one of the defining security challenges of the next cycle.

For banks, this means that trust becomes as important as code. The institutions that win will be the ones that can prove their systems are safe, transparent, and resilient across the entire operational and AI‑driven stack. Customers will hand real capital to the platforms that demonstrate credible security, predictable behaviour, and strong safeguards around both human and machine‑driven operations.

If I were advising a leadership team I'd say, quite simply, that your competitive edge in 2026 won't come from adopting AI, it will come from securing it. The institutions that treat AI‑driven security as a first‑class strategic priority will be the ones that earn trust, attract capital, and stay ahead of the next wave of financial innovation.

Thank you Mitchell! You can connect with Mitchell on their LinkedIn Profile and find out more about the company at immunefi.com.