Solana Team Imposes 1 SOL Fee for Firedancer Bug Reports
Jump Crypto wants to keep AI spam out of bug reports with a mandatory 1 SOL burn. Valid findings around Firedancer and Alpenglow will actually get higher rewards.
Key Takeaways
- Firedancer now asks researchers to burn 1 SOL for every bug report to limit AI-generated spam.
- Reports without the burn do not qualify for rewards, even if they are out of scope or duplicates.
- Jump is temporarily raising rewards; critical Alpenglow vulnerabilities can reach as high as $300,000.
The developers behind Firedancer, the alternative software for Solana validation, are now asking researchers to pay 1 SOL for every bug report. The coin is burned, which means it is permanently removed from circulation. With this move, the team wants to cut down on the flood of AI-generated spam and give engineers more time to focus on real security issues.
Stricter Rules for Reports
The new terms have been in effect since Monday. Anyone who submits a report without the burn will not be eligible for rewards. The fee also cannot be reversed, even if a report is out of scope, turns out to be incorrect, or was submitted before.
Jump Crypto built Firedancer as an alternative to Agave, the main software computers use to verify and process Solana transactions. If there is a serious bug in it, those computers may no longer process payments properly or may disagree about account balances. That can disrupt trading and transfers.
AI Puts Pressure on the Bounty Program
The move follows a $1 million audit contest between April 9 and May 9. It drew 809 reports from 162 researchers, good for 127 unique security findings if non-exploitable observations are left out. Nearly half of the valid submissions were duplicates. Jump thinks AI agents helped discover or write almost every submission.
That picture fits a broader trend in cybersecurity. Other players, including Google and Curl, have also temporarily paused or adjusted their bug bounty programs after a wave of low-quality, often AI-generated reports. At the same time, the rise of AI also shows that the same tools can sometimes help surface serious vulnerabilities faster. Core Lightning also previously warned that AI-driven bug reports can expose real vulnerabilities, but also put extra pressure on development teams.
Rewards Stay High
Jump is raising rewards at the same time as the stricter entry requirement. Valid findings will get double the standard payout until November 20, or three times as much for bugs that are specific to Alpenglow, Solana's new voting system. Critical Alpenglow vulnerabilities can reach as high as $300,000 (€268,100).
For Solana, the move matters because validator security directly affects how reliable transactions are on the chain. For European crypto followers, it also shows how quickly AI is changing the way security research gets done, but also how fast report quality can come under pressure.
