Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Launches $1 Million Bug Bounty Challenge Ahead of the Chang Hard Fork

• Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s co-founder, has announced a $1 million prize for hackers who successfully breach its newly introduced Lace Paper Wallet. 

• At the Rare Evo 2024 event, Hoskinson highlighted the upcoming Chang hard fork and the transition to the Voltaire Era. 

Cardano’s (ADA) Charles Hoskinson has announced a $1 million bug bounty challenge to the ADA community pending the implementation of the long-awaited Chang Hard Fork. 

Speaking at the recent Rare Evo 2024 event, Hoskinson announced that the newly introduced Lace Paper Wallet would be the object at the center of this challenge, with participants expected to breach its defense. The Lace Paper Wallet Bug Bounty Program would run until the end of 2024, or someone successfully breaches its security and retrieves the Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) inside. 

The Web3 wallet was developed by Cardano’s (ADA) parent company, Input Output Global (IOG), with Paper Wallet integrated to beef up its security. According to reports, the added features would enable users possessing PGP keys to use a single encrypted QR code to restore their wallet. 

This is, I think, the most secure paper wallet ever generated in the history of our industry.

In a video posted on X on August 17, Hoskinson expressed confidence in the wallet, boasting of its protection against attacks that encourage malicious actors to gain control of private keys to facilitate an authorized transaction. 

Hoskinson Highlights Other Updates in the Cardano Ecosystem

At the Rare Evo 2024 event , Hoskinson highlighted the demonstration of the powerful scaling solution, Hydra, featuring the classic game “Doom”. According to experts, this underscores its capabilities of handling high-throughput, real-time applications. Also, the expected Voltaire Era, which the Chang Hard Fork would introduce, was highlighted. 

As we explained earlier, this upgrade would transfer governance controls to the community. According to Cardano’s Emurgo, the first phase was initiated in July 2024 with the next part expected in the fourth quarter of 2024 (Q4 2024). 

The Chang Hard Fork is a technical component of the Voltaire era of the Cardano roadmap, which focuses on implementing a sustainable and distributed governance framework. With the first part set to be initiated in July 2024, the next part of the Hard Fork upgrade is set to happen by Q4 of this year.

The second phase would mark the full-force decentralized governance and an exit from the technical bootstrapping phase. The Delegate Representatives (DReps) are also expected to be introduced as a governance body. In addition to the possibility of the SPOs voting on governance actions, a Constitutional Committee would be online to grow membership above the seven of the interim committee. 

Finally, the community will take charge of the Treasury withdrawal. 

Cardano users will be able to propose treasury debits via governance actions. The three bodies (Constitutional Committee, DReps, and SPOs) will vote on them, and if approved, ADA will be moved out of the treasury. From that point forward, the future of the Cardano blockchain will be in the hands of its community, along with its power to draft and ratify the Cardano Constitution. This will mark a monumental step not only for the network but also for the blockchain industry as a whole, as Cardano will be the first truly distributed and community-run blockchain network.

At press time, ADA was trading at $0.33, having declined by 2% in the last 24 hours.