Bountychain: Toward Decentralizing a Bug Bounty Program with Blockchain and IPFS

Abstract

The first Bug Bounty Program (BBP) was launched in 1995 by Netscape [2]. The company created the program to discover pre-release software defects in Netscape Navigator, which gave rise to a new paradigm of security research. Other companies and organizations were slow to adopt a similar program at first; however, adoption began to increase in 2002. Organizations either formed their own BBP or joined existing programs from thirdparty providers. Today, BBPs provide a platform for people of all skill-levels to ethically find, report, and get paid for discovering security vulnerabilities.