Crypto Bounties: Sometimes it’s all empty promises

Posted by: rebphil in Articles July 30, 2014 0

Fanfare abounds regarding the new distributed crypto economy, kick-starters and bounties. I’m sure most of it is above board and legitimate. We all dream of self empoyment and self determination and this model fuels that vision. However, as 51% attacks and other nefarious actions well demonstrate, some folks can’t be trusted and can’t engage in a community minded manner.

Unfortunately, I am compelled to report that my experience also casts doubt on the health of this new economic model. In the past month I have worked to earn several different bounties and I’d like to report here on my real world experience. In a nutshell, I now sport an unexpected bad debt / accounts receivable portfolio. First, I was approached to do some writing for which I was promised 0.2 BTC. I did the job, the customer loved the work and then promptly disappeared.

Lesson number one: know who you are working for, have a real email, name and telephone contact. If they do not agree to identify themselves or pay upfront a minimum of 50% of the bounty, I say it’s shenanigans. Second, I modified an open source crypto utility to directly support an altcoin. The developer was happy and immediately rewarded me with a whopping $15 worth of their coin and the offer to take on two more similar projects. Lastly, I discovered 2 bugs on an exchange that clearly offers a bounty to anyone who finds a bug that leads to improved customer experience. There is no doubt that I qualify, as other users told me the first bug had been around for a long time, yet I’m still trying to collect. Do you see a pattern here?

So, know that we are all now well established in the crypto space. So much so that we won’t be rushing in to qualify for bounties until we:

Know who we are working for
Have validated contact information
Collect some kind of good faith measure

Please, let’s all work together to actually create a better future, knowing full well there are weak and even bad players among us. Seek out those who produce something of value, project a good vibe, have a demonstrated public presence and invest in it daily, they are out there and are worthy of your support.