Coinbase, EOS, and Stellar recently rewarded the white hat hackers who were able to discover security flaws in their crypto platforms. EOS, in particular, has paid more than $500,000 of bounties for finding bugs in its platform.
This week saw a sudden rise in the payouts of cryptocurrency bounties, a major part of which has been served by Block.one, the company behind the EOS platform. Besides EOS, other companies like Coinbase, Stellar and Augur have made their own contributions in rewarding the white-hat hackers who managed to discover security flaws in their respective platforms.
According to reports, Block.one has paid bounties totaling more than $60,000 over the past week. The company announced a reward of $10,000 for each of the bounties, of which six were marked as ‘critical threats’. Also, the earning reward of $10,000 is the maximum amount presently offered by Block.one.
Companies Offering In Bounty Programs
Block.one has spent a total of over $500,000 to its bug-hunting program since its launch in May 2018. So far this has been the largest amount paid by any company in such a less time.
As mentioned, Coinbase, Stellar and Augur have also started awarding bug bounties. Stellar, which is a popular blockchain company, paid out a hefty amount to its researchers in the past week for fixing two separate security issues, although the amount has not yet been revealed.
Even Coinbase paid out six such bounties, each one worth $4200. In addition, Augur, a decentralized betting platform running on the Ethereum blockchain, also followed the same trend, paying $500 per bounty.
Crypto companies and exchanges are increasingly offering bounties to ethical hackers as a way to strengthen the security of their platforms. Such programs are a major boon for hackers who choose to use their skillsets for legitimate purposes. In fact, the demand has grown to such an extent that a number of hubs have been established – like HackerOne – that connect ethical hackers with organizations seeking to reduce the risk of system vulnerabilities.
What are your thoughts on such bounty programs? Let us know in the comments below.
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