Autonomous Code Agents Building Wallet Plugins: Risks, Controls, and Certification

Autonomous agents are writing wallet plugins — and that should make you rethink your supply chain

Developers and platform teams building wallet integrations face a new reality in 2026: autonomous AI agents (from tools like Anthropic's Cowork and large-code agents) can generate, iterate, and ship plugin code faster than traditional teams. That velocity helps launch features, but it also amplifies risks — secret exfiltration, cryptographic misuse, dependency compromise, and opaque provenance. This article presents a practical supply-chain and certification approach you can adopt today to ensure generated wallet plugins meet security standards before they reach users.

Why this matters now (2026 context)

By late 2025 and into 2026, autonomous agents moved from research previews into mainstream developer toolchains. Anthropic’s Cowork and similar systems let agents access local files and orchestrate builds — enabling micro-app creation by non-developers and the automatic generation of wallet plugins by autonomous code agents. Simultaneously, the software supply-chain hardening movement (SLSA, Sigstore uptake) matured and regulators and platform owners now demand traceability and attestations for code that handles keys or wallet funds.

Hook: the core pain

You want to accelerate NFT and wallet plugin features with AI, but you can’t accept unchecked code that could drain user wallets or leak keys. The core question for engineering leaders and DevOps: how do you trust code that an autonomous agent wrote and committed without human expertise in wallet security?

Risk landscape for generated wallet plugins

Understanding the risk surface is the first step to mitigation. Wallet plugins—whether browser extensions, mobile SDKs, or wallet-app plugins—touch secrets, spend flows, and user consent models. When autonomous agents generate that code you add these failure modes:

• Secret exfiltration: malicious or buggy code may copy private keys, mnemonic seeds, or session tokens to remote endpoints.
• Incorrect cryptographic usage: unsafe randomness, insecure signing APIs, or misuse of nonces can result in replay/exposure.
• Dependency compromise: agent-chosen third-party libraries could include supply-chain trojans or typosquatting packages.
• Privilege escalation: plugins may request more privileges than necessary (RPC/JSON-RPC access, file system, native messaging).
• Economic risk: unbounded gas or approval flows could allow large sums to be moved from users’ wallets.
• Opaque provenance: no clear chain-of-custody for generated artifacts undermines auditability and legal compliance.

A supply-chain-first approach: principles

To manage these risks adopt these guiding principles and bake them into development and CI/CD:

• Provenance by design — every artifact must have an attested origin, build recipe, and a signed SBOM (software bill of materials).
• Least privilege and intent — generated code should be constrained by policy-as-code and capability-limited runtimes.
• Continuous attestation — certification is continuous: attestations must be renewed on build or dependency changes.
• Human-in-the-loop gating — critical steps (key handling, publish) require explicit human approval and certified reviewers.

Proposed Wallet Plugin Certification Framework (WPCF)

Below is an actionable, leveled certification framework you can adapt. It maps to existing supply-chain standards (SLSA, Sigstore, in-toto) and adds Web3-specific checks.

Level 0 — Basic Attestation (automated)

• Generate an SBOM for each build (CycloneDX or SPDX).
• Sign the build artifacts with a key managed via Sigstore/Cosign.
• Run static analysis and OpenSSF Scorecard checks; fail on critical findings.
• Run dependency vulnerability scans (Trivy, Snyk) and disallow known high-risk packages.

Level 1 — Wallet Safety Baseline

• All crypto operations must use audited libraries and meet deterministic algorithm standards.
• Automated testing: fuzzing of RPC handling, transaction simulation, and gas estimation tests on a private testnet.
• Permission matrix analysis: ensure the plugin requests only necessary capabilities; enforce least privilege.
• SBOM + manifest published to a public repository with cryptographic attestations.

Level 2 — Behavioral & Economic Controls

• Runtime policy enforcement (OPA/Rego) for transaction flows: caps, approval thresholds, and blacklist enforcement.
• Transaction simulation includes malicious-case modeling (front-running, replay, inflation of gas).
• Automated economic verification to ensure no infinite-approval or recurring spend vectors exist.

Level 3 — Third-party Audit and Continuous Certification

• Independent security audit (source + runtime) from an accredited auditor and publish a signed audit report.
• Continuous attestation: every build triggers re-scans and re-signing; certification expires if not renewed.
• Public revocation registry for certified plugins (mirrors Sigstore's transparency model).

Level 4 — Operational Assurance and Insurance

• Operational monitoring with end-to-end tracing and anomaly detection targeted to financial flows.
• Requirement for incident response and compensation program (insurance or on-platform remediation).
• Formal issuance of a compliance badge usable in plugin marketplaces and package indexes.

CI/CD integration: practical pipeline blueprint

Embed the WPCF into your CI/CD pipeline. Here’s a concrete pipeline pattern:

1. Code generation step: agent writes code in a sandboxed environment. Capture a signed intent manifest (agent version, prompt snapshot, policy-id).
2. Pre-commit checks: OpenSSF Scorecard, linters, and a dependency allowlist check. Fail fast.
3. Build with reproducibility: deterministic builds, containerized build environment, and Cosign signing of artifacts.
4. SBOM & attestations: generate CycloneDX, publish to artifact registry, and create in-toto provenance records.
5. Automated security testing: static analysis, secret scanning, fuzzing of RPC endpoints, Slither/MythX for any contract logic, and transaction simulation against a forked mainnet.
6. Policy-as-code gate: OPA/Rego policy evaluation (e.g., disallow network exfil endpoints, limit gas calls, require usage of hardware-backed keystore APIs).
7. Human-in-the-loop approval: for wallet plugins that touch keys or approve spends, require a certified reviewer sign-off that includes manual review of intent manifest.
8. Staged rollout and runtime attestation: Canary release to a small user set with runtime telemetry and attestation tokens. Monitor for anomalies before full release.
9. Continuous monitoring & renewal: periodic re-scans, auto-expiry of certification tokens, and automated revoke if telemetry shows suspicious patterns.

Runtime controls and secure patterns for wallet plugins

Even with perfect CI/CD, runtime controls are essential. Apply these patterns at runtime:

• Capability-based APIs — avoid global RPC exposure; use granular capability tokens for actions (sign-only, approve-limited, view-only).
• Secure enclaves and hardware keystores — prefer HSM/TEE-backed signing for high-value flows.
• Sandboxing — isolate plugin execution (iframe, process isolation, WebAssembly sandbox) and limit host API surface.
• Transaction confirmation UX — present deterministic, human-verifiable transaction summaries; degrade agent-built automation when high value is detected.
• Behavioral rate limits — throttle approvals and transaction creation to combat automated theft patterns.

“The provenance and attestations are the new passwords.”

Governance: policy, roles, and incident response

Embedding governance prevents the "AI wrote it, ship it" pitfall. Implement these governance controls:

• Agent policy catalog — catalog allowed agent prompts and templates for wallet tasks; forbid freeform, uncontrolled generation for sensitive features.
• Reviewer certification — create an internal program to certify reviewers in wallet security and supply-chain attestations.
• Ownership and audit logs — every agent-generated artifact must list a human owner and have immutable audit trails.
• Post-deploy playbooks — incident response that includes revocation, forced updates, user notification, and potential fund recovery plans.

Tooling and open standards to adopt now

Leverage and combine proven tools and standards — integrate them into your pipeline:

• Sigstore / Cosign / Rekor — for signing and transparency log attestation.
• SLSA — map your build pipeline to SLSA levels to demonstrate supply-chain hygiene.
• in-toto — capture step-by-step provenance across generation, build, and publish stages.
• SBOM (CycloneDX / SPDX) — publish dependency lists and licensing information.
• Static & dynamic analysis — ESLint/rulesets for wallet security, Slither/MythX for contracts, Echidna/Manticore fuzzing where applicable.
• Policy-as-code — OPA, Rego, and Gatekeeper for CI and runtime enforcement.
• Open attestations — use verifiable credentials for third-party audit certifications.

Example incident and how WPCF prevents it

Scenario: An autonomous agent, given a prompt to “create a wallet plugin that auto-approves NFT purchases for an event”, introduces an exfil endpoint and an overly-broad approval flow. Without controls this plugin could siphon users’ funds.

How WPCF protects you:

• Pre-commit policy disallows network endpoints not on allowlist: agent can’t embed exfil URLs.
• Static scanning detects secret-scanning patterns and disallows storage of mnemonic material in plain text.
• Runtime capability model forces the plugin to request only a narrow approval token, with per-transaction caps enforced via OPA.
• Human-in-the-loop gating flags the unusual auto-approve UX; a certified reviewer halts deployment for manual remediation.
• Signed attestations provide a clear audit trail for accountability.

Future predictions (2026–2028)

• Autonomous agents will increasingly operate as regulated software publishers. Expect platform-level obligations for attestation and traceability in plugin stores by 2027.
• Standards for wallet plugin certification will converge with SLSA and verifiable credentials; marketplaces will require continuous attestations for listing.
• Insurance markets will price certification: plugins with Level 3+ certification will obtain better coverage and lower premiums.
• AI-synthesized exploits will rise; defensive tooling (agent-aware fuzzers, intent-aware scanners) will become standard in CI/CD.

Actionable checklist for teams (start today)

1. Create an agent-intent manifest template and require it for every agent run that touches wallet code.
2. Integrate Sigstore/Cosign into your artifact signing pipeline and publish SBOMs.
3. Define and enforce an allowlist of third-party libraries and network endpoints via CI policies.
4. Adopt policy-as-code gates (OPA) for both CI and runtime behavior enforcement.
5. Require human sign-off and certified reviewer checks for any plugin that touches keys, signing flows, or spend approvals.
6. Run dynamic tests: transaction simulation on forked mainnet and targeted fuzzing for RPC handlers.
7. Establish a revoke/rollback mechanism and an incident playbook before production rollout.

Closing thoughts: certify the code your agents write

Autonomous agents accelerate delivery, but they also change the shape of trust. In the wallet and payments domain, trust is binary: users’ funds and identities are at risk. The right response is not banning agents — it’s building a resilient supply chain and certification model that makes generated code auditable, attestable, and continuously safe.

If your org is integrating AI generation into wallet development pipelines, start by mapping agent outputs to attestable artifacts and enforce human-in-the-loop gating for all sensitive flows. The combination of SLSA-style supply-chain hygiene, Sigstore attestations, policy-as-code gates, and third-party audits forms a defensible baseline for 2026 and beyond.

Next steps — practical offers from nftapp.cloud

We’ve prepared a Wallet Plugin Certification Starter Kit for engineering teams: a prebuilt CI/CD pipeline with Sigstore integration, OPA policies tailored for wallet flows, an intent-manifest schema, and a sample human-review checklist. Contact our team to pilot a certified plugin workflow with your autonomous agent toolchain.

Call to action

Don’t let speed erode security. Get the Wallet Plugin Certification Starter Kit, run a gap assessment against the WPCF, or book a workshop to map your pipeline to SLSA + Sigstore attestations. Reach out to nftapp.cloud to schedule a 30-minute technical review and get a customized roadmap for certifying agent-generated wallet plugins.

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