MakerDAO issues a $10M bug bounty to detect vulnerabilities on the network

MakerDAO has announced a hefty bounty of up to $10M to any white hat or cybersecurity expert who will detect security threats on its smart contracts. This is one of the largest bounties in the sector.

MakerDAO’s $10M bounty

MakerDAO’s bounty is the largest on Immunefi, a bug bounty platform. If this bounty is claimed, it will equate to the total bounty amount awarded by the platform. According to Immunefi, it has so far helped to avert attacks that could have cost a cumulative loss of $20B in hacks.

Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis?

Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.

A whitehat hacker will receive rewards ranging from $1000 to the maximum possible payout of $10 million. These rewards will be given according to the extent of vulnerability detected on MakerDAO’s smart contracts and applications. The bounty will be paid in the form of DAI stablecoins.

The second-largest bug bounty on Immunefi has been listed by Olympus DAO. As in the same case with Maker, this bounty will be given to white hat hackers who will point out vulnerabilities before they are exploited.

MakerDAO is one of the reliable decentralized finance (DeFi) projects in the crypto space. It has a community that governs the collateralization and spending of DAI on the Maker treasury. Before the platform achieved full decentralization, it was run by the Maker Foundation that was dissolved in July 2021. MakerDAO stated that this dissolution would make the DAO “fully self-sufficient.”

The co-founder of Immunefi, Travin Keith, commented on this development, saying,

We’re glad to announce one of the key pillars of our mandate, which is to launch and maintain a bug bounty program that will help MakerDAO ensure its safety.

Heightened risk on smart contracts

The first two months of 2022 have been marked with increased incidences of attacks on smart contract platforms. In just two weeks, hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost to hackers. The latest attack was on Dego Finance, where hackers withdrew more than $10 million from the protocol. The other latest attack happened on February 7, with the exploit on the Meter.io token bridge. Following this hack, $4.4 million was stolen.

The largest attack this year was on the Wormhole bridge. This bridge links the Ethereum (ETH/USD) and Solana (SOL/USD) blockchains. A hacker managed to conduct an exploit that drained $320 million worth of wrapped Ethereum from the protocol. The hack also created concerns about the safety of cross-chain bridges.