Bitcoin Association for BSV today announced the launch of its first Bitcoin SV Bug Bounty Program, aimed at improving the security of the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain by ensuring the soundness of its underlying protocol.
The BSV blockchain is designed to align with the original Bitcoin protocol, offering scaling, transaction throughput and low transaction fees thanks to its lack of an artificial block size limit, the platform said.
The bounty programme encompasses many aspects of the Bitcoin SV codebase and spans vulnerabilities and errors across all aspects of the BSV network, including the consensus model, proof-of-work mechanism, peer-to-peer protocols, and network security.
Rewards from the bug bounty are distributed according to a series of pre-defined threat levels
Critical rewards of $100,000 are provided to those locating “catastrophic” impacts on the network as a whole and also pertain to situations relating to compromised network availability and loss of funds. High, $50,000 rewards signify those solutions impacting individual nodes, individual node crashes, or the potential for a loss of funds.
Medium threat levels come with $25,000 and relate to situations that are not easily exploitable, ones with medium impact or which result in no loss of funds. Low impacts are defined as those which are not easily exploitable or which have low impact.
Rewards are denominated in US dollars but paid in BSV. Developers who discover vulnerabilities are encouraged to include a proof-of-concept detailing the exploit to speed up the evaluation of their submission.
Only some attack types and branches of the BSV code base are within the scope of this bounty program, the company explained. Certain vulnerabilities will only qualify for bug bounty rewards if they fulfill specific criteria.
“The BSV blockchain continues to grow in adoption and technical capability, allowing it to serve as the most stable and efficient blockchain platform for enterprise and government applications,” Bitcoin Association managing director Patrick Prinz said. “As the BSV ecosystem continues to evolve, it is important to ensure the security of network protocols and monitor for any vulnerabilities.
“Through the launch of this Bitcoin SV Bug Bounty Programme, we are encouraging developers to maintain this security by offering substantial rewards of up to $100,000 for vulnerabilities they detect. The BSV blockchain’s scalable and powerful infrastructure will revolutionize payments and create a new Internet of value, and it is crucial that it remains transparent and secure at all times.”