Solana bug reports now cost 1 SOL — worth about $100 — after AI-assisted submissions flooded security teams with spam. Researchers reporting bugs in Firedancer, Solana’s alternative validator software, must now permanently burn 1 SOL for every submission, CoinDesk reports.
Solana (Credits: CoinDesk)
The tokens must be burned, which permanently removes them from circulation. Under terms updated Monday, the cost is nonrefundable even if a report is invalid, outside the program’s scope, or duplicates an earlier finding. Reports submitted without a burn are ineligible for rewards.
Solana Bug Reports: Why 1 SOL Now Costs $100 Per Submission
The change follows a monthlong audit contest that drew 809 reports but produced only 127 unique security findings, according to CoinDesk’s summary. Nearly all of the reports were believed to have been generated or written with AI assistance, and nearly half of valid submissions duplicated earlier reports.
Trading firm Jump Crypto built Firedancer as an alternative to Agave, the main software used by the computers that check and process Solana transactions. A serious flaw can stop those computers processing payments or make them disagree about account balances, disrupting trades and transfers — so hundreds of duplicate or unworkable reports take engineers’ time away from investigating and fixing genuine vulnerabilities.
Higher Rewards for Real Solana Flaws
At the same time, Jump Crypto is temporarily increasing rewards, with critical flaws in Solana’s Alpenglow voting system eligible for payouts of up to $300,000, CoinDesk reports. The message is clear: the programme still wants serious researchers — it just wants fewer low-effort, AI-generated reports clogging the queue.
This is a news report on a programme change, not investment advice. The 1 SOL burn is a cost researchers must weigh before submitting, and it applies even when a report turns out to be invalid or a duplicate.
Source: CoinDesk — read the full story there.
