$1 million bug bounty program for 'Firedancer' Solana client to begin July 10

The long-awaited and highly anticipated 'Firedancer' independent validator client for the Solana blockchain, built by Jump Crypto, will soon begin its first bug bounty program. 

The program, which was announced by pseudonymous developer Cantelope Peel, will begin on July 10 and last 6 weeks. The program, powered by Immunefi, will distribute a maximum of $1 million to developers who find significant bugs in Firedancer v0.1, nicknamed "Frankendancer," the first version of the client. 

Work on Firedancer appears to be progressing well, according to Cantelope Peel, who wrote on X that "Millions of slots of execution have been tested and match the Solana protocol." 

The Firedancer client is meant to boost Solana's resiliency, as any issues with the current spate of clients could mean big problems for the blockchain. Furthermore, Firedancer is implemented in C/C++ which optimizes the client for the high-frequency trading Jump is known for. 

"Given Solana's success, our participation in the ecosystem over a couple years, and the very specific technical challenges that they wanted to solve as it pertains to optimizing their network and runtime, [Firedancer] felt like a really great opportunity for us to come in and contribute," Jump Crypto president Kanav Kariya told The Block last year.