Bounty Rules

How bounties work

A bounty, or mission, is a task a project posts with a reward in SOL. Each bounty page shows its requirements, deliverables, judging criteria, reward structure, deadline, review window, how many submissions one person can make, and whether revisions are allowed. These rules apply to every bounty; a bounty's published terms add to them.

Projects are responsible for defining their requirements clearly, and should not materially change them once contributors are working on a funded bounty. If something is unclear, ask the project before you submit. Each bounty uses one of these reward structures:

• Winner takes all: one submission receives the whole reward.
• Multiple winners: fixed prizes for several places.
• First valid submission: paid to the first submission that meets the bounty's objective criteria.
• Open contribution: a fixed amount for each accepted submission until the pool runs out.
• Milestones: the reward is split across defined deliverables.

Funding verification

A bounty shows as “Funded” only after its escrow is confirmed on-chain. To fund a bounty, the project moves the full reward pool from its treasury into a dedicated escrow account for that bounty. BountyPad then reads the blockchain and marks the bounty Funded only if the escrow exists and holds exactly the advertised reward.

“Funding pending” means a funding transaction was sent but is not confirmed yet. Bounties that aren't funded don't accept submissions. You can check any bounty's escrow yourself on a Solana block explorer.

The escrow is governed by BountyPad's escrow program, and BountyPad cannot withdraw from it. Escrowed funds can only be paid to an approved contributor's wallet, or returned to the project's treasury by a cancellation before the deadline or after the review window expires. SOL a project keeps in its treasury without allocating it to a bounty is not escrowed, and the project owner can withdraw it at any time.

Submitting work

To submit, you need a BountyPad account with a verified wallet: the wallet you signed in with. Members of a project's team can't submit to that project's bounties.

• Submission limit: each bounty sets how many submissions one person can make, from 1 to 10 (2 by default). Withdrawn submissions don't count toward the limit.
• No duplicates: the same link can't be submitted twice to one bounty.
• Deadline: submissions close at the deadline, unless the bounty page says it keeps accepting work during the review window.
• Edits and withdrawals: you can edit a pending submission while the bounty is accepting work, and withdraw it while it awaits review. Submitted work can't go back to being a draft.
• Files: each attachment can be up to 25 MB and stays private to the project's review team until your submission is accepted.
• Rate limits apply to prevent spam.

Review and revisions

The project's team reviews each submission and can shortlist it, request a revision, approve it or reject it, optionally with a note and a rating. Selection is the project's decision, made against the criteria it published. Submissions are not guaranteed to be selected or paid unless the bounty's structure explicitly guarantees payment.

Revisions are possible only if the bounty allows them. A submission can have one open revision request at a time, and you must actually change your work before resubmitting. You can finish a requested revision after the deadline, but it still has to be approved and paid before the review window ends.

Every bounty has a review window after its deadline, between 1 and 30 days (7 by default), for the project to review and pay. The window is written into the escrow when the bounty is funded and can't be extended afterwards.

Payouts

Approval is not payment. After approving a submission, the project owner must sign a payout transaction that releases the reward from the bounty's escrow. BountyPad cannot release a payout on a project's behalf.

• Verified wallet only: BountyPad only prepares payouts to the verified wallet recorded on your submission when you submitted it, and marks a submission Paid only after confirming on-chain that the payment went to that wallet for the right amount.
• One payout per submission: the escrow program writes an on-chain receipt for every payout, which makes paying the same submission twice impossible.
• Each prize position is paid once, and a bounty can never pay out more than its escrow holds.
• The wallet that controls the project's treasury can't pay a reward to itself.
• You receive the full prize shown on the bounty. Any BountyPad fee is charged to the project as a separate line item.
• Payouts must be made before the review window ends. After that, the escrow can't pay anyone.

Cancellation

A project owner can cancel a bounty only before its deadline. Cancelling returns everything left in the escrow to the project's treasury, never to BountyPad or anyone else. Pending submissions are closed as not selected, and their contributors are notified.

Once the deadline passes, a bounty can't be cancelled: it can only pay approved work until the review window ends, and then expire. Cancelling to avoid paying for work that met the published requirements breaks these rules.

Expiry

When the review window ends, the escrow can no longer pay anyone and the bounty expires. Closing an expired escrow is permissionless (anyone can trigger it), but the unpaid funds can only go back to the project's treasury.

Once the escrow is closed, submissions that weren't paid are closed too and can't be paid from that escrow. Opening a dispute does not pause or extend the review window.

Fair play

Breaking these rules can lead to hidden content, reputation penalties, a frozen project or a ban. See the Dispute Policy for how disagreements are handled. In particular:

• Don't use extra accounts or wallets to get around a submission limit or to submit to your own project's bounties.
• Don't submit work that isn't yours; see the Content Guidelines.
• Projects must not use bounties to collect work they don't intend to pay for, or reject work and then use it anyway.
• Don't coordinate with others to manipulate results, ratings or reputation.