EOS Bug Bounty Launch Raises Questions From Industry Experts

The mainnet launch of EOS is inching closer. As such, the developers want to ensure there are no lingering bugs or fatal flaws for hackers to exploit. A bug bounty program has been created which rewards $10,000 for every bug discovered and shared. This is a positive development, even though the venture also receives some backlash from industry experts.

It is commendable to see developers pay attention to project security. Especially in the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency, security is quite important. Developing a bounty program to uncover any code bugs is a big step in the right direction. For the EOS team, it seems this is a smart decision which will improve the project prior to its main net launch.

Help us find critical bugs in #EOSIO before our 1.0 release. $10K for every unique bug that can cause a crash, privilege escalation, or non-deterministic behavior in smart contracts. Offer subject to change, ID required, validity decided at the sole discretion of Block One.

— Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster7) May 28, 2018

The team hopes to find any unique bugs which may be present in its code base. EOS doesn’t need any issues crashing the network or giving unauthorized users special privileges. All bugs can be submitted to Block One, and the reports will be validated by this entity as well. Users who submit a bug for the reward will need to provide a valid ID to verify their identity.

Contrary to some reports, there is no delay in the release of EOSIO v1. While some issues were discovered by researchers, most of the problems have been addressed already. That is a positive development and confirms the commitment of the team. There are still some issues which are in the process of being fixed. Which issues those are exactly, remains to be seen.

Any bug bounty program in the cryptocurrency world deserves to be applauded. However, such ventures will also face some criticism, for rather obvious reasons. Charlie Lee, the developer of Litecoin, has some intriguing remarks regarding the EOS bounty program. More specifically, he thinks the rewards offered for finding and sharing bugs are on the low side. The EOS project raised over $4 billion through its year-long ICO, after all.

Raises $4B, offers to pay only $10k for catastrophic bugs 2 days before mainnet launch. Strange.