Immunefi says it has facilitated $66M in bug bounty payouts to whitehats since inception

by Jeremy

Based on a brand new report launched on Dec. 21, blockchain safety agency Immunefi mentioned that it has processed greater than $65,918,994 crypto bounties paid to moral hackers over 1,248 stories since its inception on Dec. 9, 2020. Net 3.0 initiatives checklist bounty packages on ImmuneFi to encourage whitehat hackers to report vulnerabilities and declare financial rewards, which the corporate then facilitates.

The payouts seem like concentrated in nature, with bounty packages operated by Wormhole, Aurora, Polygon, Optimism, and an undisclosed agency accounting for $30.2 million price of rewards up to now yr. The median payout was $2,000, and the common payout was $52,800. A small variety of crucial vulnerability bug stories acquired the very best rewards. 

“A $5,000 bounty payout for a crucial vulnerability may match within the web2 world, for instance, however it doesn’t work within the web3 world. If the direct lack of funds for a web3 vulnerability could possibly be as much as $50 million {dollars}, then it is sensible to supply a a lot bigger bounty measurement to incentivize good habits.”

When it comes to vulnerability notifications, Good Contracts points took the lead, with a complete of 728 submissions, accounting for 58.3% of paid stories. In the meantime, the Web sites and Functions and Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Expertise (DLT) classes totaled 488 submissions (39.1) and 32 submissions (2.6%), respectively. Curiously, regardless of having a excessive variety of submissions, Web site and Functions stories solely represented 2.9% of complete whitehat payouts, whereas Good Contract bugs accounted for 89.6% of funds.

The Wormhole vulnerability discovery resulted in a $10 million bug bounty payout | Supply: Immunefi

The bounty packages detected excessive vulnerability stories, such because the case in Pods Finance, for a logic error that allowed for theft of yield or abuse of the rewards system on the protocol. One other contains Mushrooms Finance’s vulnerability which could possibly be probably exploited through a miner-extractable worth assault with flash bots.

The report additionally devoted a portion of ransom evaluation, revealing that malicious hackers have returned $32.7 million in funds illicitly gained from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols throughout 5 particular conditions in 2022. Hackers have saved $6,44 million in complete ransom funds. Some consultants say that the cost of ransom to hackers quantities to giving into extortion, however almost all agree that it is significantly better to instate a bug bounty program ex ante facto. Immunefi at present gives $144 million in bounty rewards via Net 3.0 initiatives listed on the platform.