Solana’s Alpenglow bug hunt charges researchers 0.5 SOL to report flaws

Anza is charging security researchers a non-refundable 0.5 SOL to file each Alpenglow finding before the competition closes at 16:00 UTC on Aug. 19.The rules require every finding to pass through a designated portal, which burns the fee and creates one confidential GitHub Security Advisory. Reports sent through another channel are ineligible.The target is consequential. SIMD-0326 proposes Alpenglow as a backwards-incompatible replacement for Solana’s current Proof-of-History and TowerBFT consensus protocol. Anza has put the new consensus components, their validator integrations and the migration path inside the bounty’s temporary scope.Researchers pay the filing cost before Anza determines validity, severity, duplication or reward. They also work against a moving version of Agave master. Each report must identify the commit where the flaw appeared, reproduce the issue there and arrive while the bug remains unfixed on master.A proof-of-concept requirement and the filing burn can reduce placeholder submissions. They can also price out a valid finding whose impact or priority is uncertain. The published rules contain no measure of participation or report quality that would settle the ...