Lit Protocol Launches Vincent Early Access for Building AI Agents in DeFi

Lit Protocol's Vincent Early Access is now live, giving developers immediate tools to create permissioned, non-custodial AI agents for real DeFi strategies, powered by onchain guardrails and decentralized key management.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Lit Protocol today launched Early Access to Vincent, giving developers immediate access to build and deploy permissioned AI agents with real credentials and transaction power. The platform delivers user-controlled automation across the web, starting with a focus on DeFi and extending to any online service where agents operate under explicit, revocable rules.

"Vincent is built for a new era of the web, where autonomous agents can trade, invest, and transact only within the rules their users set. DeFi is the perfect proving ground, where security, transparency, and control matter most. With Early Access now live, developers can build powerful, non-custodial agents from day one," said David Sneider, Co-Founder at Lit Protocol.

What Vincent Enables

Vincent provides an auth and execution layer so agents can log in, sign, and transact without ever exposing private keys, API keys, or OAuth tokens. Users grant fine-grained permissions, and onchain guardrails enforce those permissions at runtime via Lit's decentralized threshold network. The result is a secure way to give agents real authority, with the user always in control.

How Developers Build: Apps, Abilities, Policies

Apps are the top-level packages developers ship into Vincent. An app can include one or more agents, a manifest of required abilities, and optional policies that govern how and when those abilities may be used.

Abilities are composable actions an agent can perform on behalf of a user, such as borrow on Aave, swap on Uniswap, or bridge via deBridge. Abilities encapsulate contract interaction and safety checks, are versioned and reusable, and are explicitly permissioned by the user at connect time.

Policies define who can invoke an ability, when it can execute, and how much value or risk is allowed, including time windows, schedules, rate limits, value ceilings, slippage caps, and position size limits. Policies are stored onchain and enforced by Lit.

"Vincent makes it possible to give agents real transaction power without sacrificing safety. Every action is an explicitly permissioned ability, and every policy is enforced onchain by our decentralized threshold network. Developers can build with the confidence that their agents will never exceed the authority users grant them," said Chris Cassano, Co-Founder at Lit Protocol.

As a live example, Vincent Yield is a Vincent-built app that demonstrates what is possible in DeFi. When a user deposits stablecoins, the agent automatically routes the funds to supported, higher-yield pools. Permissions and policy caps ensure it operates only within user-approved parameters, and earnings are visible in a simple dashboard.

At Early Access, the live abilities available to developers include Morpho for lending, Aave v3 for lending markets, Uniswap v3 for swaps, and deBridge for cross-chain transfers.

Developers can execute agent strategies via the Vincent SDK or expose abilities as tools through the Model Context Protocol, enabling conversational setup of goals and permissions.

What's Next

Upcoming features include Solana support and AI-powered policy suggestions to make configuring new agents one-click simple. Lit Protocol will continue to expand the Vincent ecosystem in collaboration with the developer community.

Beyond DeFi: User-Controlled Automation Across the Web

While the first wave of builders is focused on DeFi, the same permissioning and enforcement stack applies to traditional finance, such as stock trading, SaaS and API automations, social media operations, and more. Any workflow requiring credentials can be delegated to agents, with user-defined guardrails and revocation.

Availability

Vincent Early Access is live today. Developers can explore the agent registry, connect abilities, and start shipping apps. For users, Vincent includes a clean console to view, pause, and remove agents and to see earnings from supported strategies.

Get started at heyvincent.ai

About Lit Protocol

Secure, manage, and automate accounts and actions across the web with Lit Protocol. Our first-of-its-kind threshold cryptography network introduces programmability to key management. This enables secure communication, authentication, and interaction with digital assets for AI agents, apps, and organizations, all without concentrating trust in a third party to custody and manage keys. Lit empowers developers to build interoperable and composable systems that unify the many fragmented networks making up today's web, both onchain and off.

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SOURCE Lit Protocol