After the hack @DEVCON1, Martin Swende has taken the lead in the Ethereum Bounty Program. The rewards program is ongoing, with the last reward amounting to roughly 5 BTC. Everyone is free to participate in the program. Ethereum is emphasizing the importance of BTC relay and wants to include it in the bounty program.
BTC Relay is an Ethereum contract that implements Bitcoin SPV. It is used to transfer any sufficiently verified Bitcoin transaction to an Ethereum address. If someone creates a transaction that is not canonical on the Bitcoin blockchain, BTC relay can still send it to a specific Ethereum contract. Details of the specification can be found here.
Security issues such as incorrect block headers, false evidence, and invalid authorizations must be identified. Even if a valid Bitcoin transaction is not fully transmitted via BTC relay, it may still be eligible for a reward. The top bugs will be rewarded with 1 BTC, and severe vulnerabilities can garner rewards up to 5 BTC. Those involved in the reward program or BTC Relay development cannot receive rewards.
The scope of the contract is the 5 “.se” files in the root directory of this GitHub repository.
Full SPV client functionality is not covered, such as verifying Bitcoin Block timestamps to reduce gas prices. There are also no plans to create incentivization mechanisms or cost of gas optimizations. Nonetheless, feedback is welcome.
The Ethereum Bounty Program has most of the rules for the new BTC Relay rewards program. Websites are not eligible for rewards, and members of the team are not able to receive them. Rewards are also not limited to monetary rewards, as the following are also included: a leaderboard with points accumulated through the program, registration in Ethereum’s namereg, and a limited edition Ethereum Bountyhunter t-shirt.
The BTC Relay rewards program will run for a few weeks before launching. If you’d like to join the conversation, there is a Gitter chatroom available to all. Some of the topics discussed include what the first block of BTC Relay should be, how to verify Bitcoin transactions from a while back, the default fees, and who the verifiers are.
BTC Relay has already been submitted to bounty.ethdev.com and has received one reward shipment.