TL;DR
- The Firedancer team introduced a 1 Solana (SOL) fee for each vulnerability report. The tokens must be burned and cannot be recovered, even if the submission is rejected.
- The decision followed a security competition that received 809 reports from 162 researchers. Jump Crypto believes AI was involved in preparing nearly all of them.
- The program will double rewards for valid vulnerabilities through November 20. Alpenglow-related bugs will receive triple payouts, with rewards of up to $300,000 for critical findings.
The team behind Firedancer, a Solana validator client, has begun requiring security researchers to burn 1 SOL for every vulnerability report they submit. The fee is worth approximately $100 and is intended to reduce duplicate or poorly substantiated reports, many of which are generated using artificial intelligence.
The tokens must be permanently removed from circulation. The fee is nonrefundable, even if a report is invalid, falls outside the program’s scope, or describes a previously identified bug. Researchers who do not burn the tokens will also be ineligible for rewards.
Firedancer was developed by Jump Crypto as an alternative to Agave, the main software used by Solana validators. A serious vulnerability could cause disruptions in transaction processing or disagreements between validators over the network’s state.
Solana Receives Hundreds of AI-Assisted Security Reports
Between April 9 and May 9, Jump organized a security audit competition offering $1 million in rewards. A total of 162 researchers participated, submitting 809 reports. After reviewing the submissions, the team identified 127 unique vulnerabilities, excluding findings that could not be exploited.
Nearly half of the valid reports were duplicates. Jump believes artificial intelligence tools were used to discover or write virtually every submission.
The backlog reached 299 reports awaiting review. Approximately 80% of duplicate reports were submitted more than three days after the first report of the same vulnerability.
The competition already required a $100 fee per submission and limited participants to one report per day. The new platform also imposes a limit of 3,000 characters per main section.
Firedancer Increases Rewards for Critical Bugs
The audit uncovered serious issues, including a scheduling bug that could alter the order in which transactions were executed and cause Solana validators to disagree on the resulting network state.
Jump also decided to increase incentives for researchers. Through November 20, valid vulnerabilities will receive twice the standard reward.
Bugs specific to Alpenglow, Solana’s new voting system, will qualify for triple payouts. Rewards for the most critical findings could reach $300,000.
