As Ethereum is approaching its transition to the network away from its energy-intensive mining mechanism, it is quadrupling its bug bounties before the merge occurs.
Ethereum’s stewards want to make sure it goes off without a hitch. Thus, they are willing to spend significant money to incentivize white-hat hackers to uncover vulnerabilities beforehand.
Bug bounties set 4x higher
The Ethereum Foundation disclosed today that it has increased the bug bounties paid between now and September 8 by a factor of four for any merge-related network vulnerabilities discovered during that time frame.
“All Merge-related bounties for vulnerabilities have received a 4x multiplier between now and the 8th of September. Critical bugs are now worth up to $1 million USD,” the announcement posted on its blog stated.
This information was released in conjunction with announcing a new timeframe for the merge.
It implies that any vulnerabilities considered a serious risk that are revealed to the Foundation will be eligible for a reward of up to $1 million, as opposed to the standard payout of $250,000.
Similarly, “high risk” vulnerabilities will now be rewarded with up to $200,000, “medium risk” bugs with up to $40,000, and “low risk” bugs with up to $8,000.
Ethereum bug bounty programs coverage
According to their announcement, the scope of its bug bounty programs covers “soundness of protocols (such as the blockchain consensus model, the wire and p2p protocols, proof of work, proof of stake, etc) and protocol/implementation compliance to network security and consensus integrity.”
Moreover, the usual client security and cryptographic security are also part of the program.
The merge time frame
The transition or the merge has been on the horizon for Ethereum users for some years already, as the network’s engineers have been determining how to properly shift to a secure consensus technique that does not need a proof-of-work mining paradigm.
Currently, it is anticipated that the merger will occur sooner than later.
The Ethereum Foundation has provided a time frame ranging from September 10 to September 20, suggesting that the merger may occur even sooner than was first envisaged. It was previously forecasted that the merger would take place on either September 15 or 16, however now they disclosed the timetable for when it will take place.