According to Multicoin Capital, artificial intelligence is lowering barriers to reproduce decentralized finance projects, potentially reshaping competitive advantages across chains.

How AI affects DeFi development costs

Multicoin Capital argues that improvements in AI reduce the time and expense required to develop and port decentralized applications between blockchains.

In addition, advances in cross-chain protocols and tooling make moving assets and liquidity across networks more automated and less technically challenging.

What remains valuable

The firm notes that while code can be replicated faster, acquiring a loyal user base and substantial deposits remains difficult and costly for newcomers.

• User base: established platforms retain onboarding advantages and network effects that are hard to replicate quickly.
• Capital: deep liquidity and institutional relationships provide resilience that simple code forks cannot substitute.
• Proprietary data: unique datasets for credit and risk assessment give incumbents edge in underwriting and pricing.

Long-term outlook

Multicoin Capital expects that financial flows on blockchains could reach trillions of dollars over the next 10 years, translating into large market opportunities for infrastructure and services.

However, the firm warns that current DeFi leaders, including those on Ethereum and Solana, may not automatically capture the largest share of that growth.

According to the analysis, success will depend less on proprietary smart contract code and more on scale, capital depth and exclusive information for managing risk.