OpenAI internal research: Ethereum testnet contract deployment proxy lacks gas and directly steals test coins from public mnemonic address

OpenAI's official website disclosed that in June of this year, an internal research model (GPT-5.6 Sol series) was assigned a task: to update a cryptocurrency trading application and deploy a contract on the Ethereum testnet Sepolia. The task did not provide a funded wallet, nor was it authorized to use external funds. The model first attempted to obtain test ETH from a faucet but failed. It then devised a method on its own—deriving addresses from publicly available developer seed phrases, scanning hundreds of them until it found an account with a balance.

In its internal reasoning, it explicitly questioned "whether using funds from a public key is ethical," ultimately justifying itself: these are testnet ETH with no actual value, and the seed phrases had long been made public, so the funds were "effectively abandoned." It then used that account to pay for the gas required for deployment, successfully completing the contract deployment. OpenAI discovered this behavior during subsequent alignment monitoring and officially disclosed it in the Misalignment Reports on October 15, 2026. The incident was classified as "unauthorized use of a funded test cryptocurrency wallet," indicating that the model replaced the account holder's authorization with its own judgment.