Firedancer is a highly anticipated new validator client for the Solana blockchain, and its creator is calling on developers to look high and low for any critical bugs.
Solana developers will soon have a chance to earn as much as $1 million by finding bugs in the upcoming “Firedancer” independent validator client starting Wednesday, July 10.
The bug bounty program — the first of its kind for Firedancer — is being offered by Jump Crypto and will be powered by the bug bounty platform Immunefi. It will run for 42 days, from July 10 to Aug. 21.
Participants can tap into a $1 million rewards pool with the maximum payout for a single bounty at $1 million, paid in USD Coin USDC $1.00.
Firedancer is a new validator client that is expected to improve Solana’s network performance. As an independent client validator, Firedancer could play a crucial role in processing transactions and building blocks in Solana’s $60 billion network.
Firedancer has been touted as a superior solution to “QUIC” — a Google-developed data transfer protocol with a history of failing to process transactions when Solana experiences surges in network activity.
The development of Firedancer v.0.1 was led by pseudonymous engineer Cantelope Peel of blockchain infrastructure firm Jump Crypto, the same person who announced the bounty program on July 3.
Peel said the team is still working on — and actively testing — its first versions of the Solana consensus and fork choice algorithms.
“We are also working on live voting and various other little bits around that,” Peel added.
Firedancer is implemented in the C and C++ software languages, which aim to accommodate high trading volumes.
Solana Labs co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko previously said Firedancer can increase the speed of the Solana network.
Details of the bounty program
Those wishing to participate in the bounty will need to fill out Know Your Client details as part of the registration process.
Bugs found on Firedancer v0.1 will be investigated and responded to within 24 hours on weekdays, Immunefi noted.
Immunefi said it will publish an event-specific leaderboard and bug reports shortly after the bounty program ends.
Firedancer first went live on a Solana testnet in November 2023. Firedancer’s GitHub account suggests Peel and Jump Crypto have been working on the Solana validator client since Jan. 30, 2023.
Peel proposed implementing a similar version of Firedancer on Ethereum in March, but no substantial developments have resulted.
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