Rony Roy
Blockchain infrastructure firm Jump Crypto has announced a $1 million big bounty program for Firedancer. The new third-party validator client is designed to improve the network’s efficiency.
The announcement came from Cantelope Peel, a pseudonymous engineer from Jump Crypto who has been leading the development of Firedancer v.0.1.
Firedancer’s first bug bounty program
Participating developers will get a chance to tap into a $1 million rewards pool. The maximum reward for a single bounty is also set at $1 million, with the rewards to be paid in USD Coin (USDC).
Firedancer has been hailed as a sustainable solution to the technical hiccups that have plagued the Solana network. Specifically, QUIC has been narrowed down as the reason for Solana transactions to fail during times of heavy demand.
The testnet for Firedancer was launched in November 2023. Being an independent client validator, it is expected to play a key role in transaction processing.
The event will be held on the bug bounty platform Immunefi, spanning 42 days from July 10 to Aug. 21, 2024. Participants are required to fill out know-your-client details as part of the registration process.
This event marks the first bug bounty program for the upcoming validator client. All bugs discovered will be investigated and addressed within 24 hours during weekdays.
Bug reports and the results of the bounty program will be disclosed once the event ends.
At the time of publication, Peel revealed that the development team behind Firedancer is testing its first versions of the Solana consensus and fork choice algorithms. Other updates underway include a “live voting” feature.
To allow for on-chain high-frequency trading (HFT) activity, Firedancer is being implemented in C and C++ programming languages.
Solana itself is written using Rust, but C and C++ are the most commonly used when it comes to high-frequency trading. Since they have low-level access to the computer’s hardware, they can have more fine-tuned control of the hardware.
This approach has been commended by Solana Labs co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko, who expects a boost in performance post-implementation.
Solana’s surge in activity
Amidst this backdrop, Solana’s liquid staking protocol has witnessed significant activity.
The number of liquid staking tokens (LSTs) on Solana, along with the top three liquid staking providers, is seeing a drop in dominance. This means more participants are entering the market.
Recent data from Dune analytics show over $3.5 billion worth of SOL tokens staked on liquidity platforms on Solana. This comprises only 6% of the total SOL locked in the network.
Meanwhile, there have been talks regarding a potential Solana ETF. However, Matthew Sigel, VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Research, believes it hinges on changes within the U.S. SEC leadership.
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