Solana devs billed $5K for single query via Google Cloud’s BigQuery

Opinion by: Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO of Immunefi

Crypto’s best defense against catastrophic hacks isn’t code — it’s incentives. Bug bounties have prevented billions in losses, and it’s important to emphasize that these billions could have been exploits, not responsible disclosures, if the right incentives hadn’t been set up. This protection only works when the incentives for white hat behavior clearly outweigh those for exploitation, and current market trends are now tilting that balance in dangerous ways.

The scaling bug bounty standard means the reward size should grow with the amount of capital at risk. If a vulnerability could drain $10 million, the bounty should offer up to $1 million. These are life-changing incentives for security researchers to disclose rather than exploit, and they’re cost-effective for protocols compared to the devastating alternative of getting hacked. This scaling approach protects entire protocols from destruction and ensures the continual growth of onchain finance.

The problem is that market competition is warping these incentives. Some platforms are now tying their lowest-cost service plans to capped bounty rewards, sometimes no higher than $50,000. This pricing structure pressures protocols to minimize rewards and reduce costs, creating conditions for the next catastrophic hack. 

Bug bounties as defense mechanisms

Cork Protocol’s recent $12-million hack offers a telling example. The protocol had set its critical bug bounty at just $100,000, a fraction of the funds at risk. This misalignment creates a simple economic calculation: Why spend hundreds of hours finding a vulnerability if the capped payout is 120 times lower than the exploit value? Such math doesn’t discourage exploitation; it encourages it.

Bug bounties are critical defense mechanisms that only work when they align with risk. When protocols with tens of millions in total value locked offer bounties in the low five figures, they’re effectively betting that hackers will choose ethics over economics. That’s not a strategy — that’s hope.

The million-dollar standard exists for a reason

Crypto’s security standards were forged through million-dollar moments. MakerDAO set a $10-million bounty that signaled what protection was worth. Wormhole’s $10-million payout after a critical exploit cemented the precedent that meaningful security requires meaningful incentives. Security researchers need life-changing reasons to choose disclosure over destruction in an industry where exploits can drain treasuries in minutes.

This scaling approach has demonstrably worked. When critical vulnerabilities can affect millions in user funds, bounties should offer proportional rewards, typically around 10% of the capital at risk. These economics help ensure the best researchers stay in the ecosystem and remain motivated to report vulnerabilities.

Market forces are creating dangerous precedents

The race to capture market share has led some platforms to compete on price rather than security outcomes. By linking platform fees to capped bounty rewards, they create a perverse incentive structure; protocols choose lower rewards to minimize costs, not because risk justifies it, but because pricing encourages it. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what bug bounties are. They aren’t just expenses; they’re insurance policies whose value must scale with what they protect.

Worse, some security platforms now require exclusivity contracts that restrict where researchers can work. Others allow post-disclosure repricing that undermines researcher trust. These practices chip away at the social contract that makes bug bounties effective in the first place. If skilled researchers lose confidence in the system’s fairness, they have three options: stop hunting, shift to private audits or go dark.

The result is a chilling effect: Protocols cap rewards to cut costs. Researchers opt out because the upside isn’t worth the effort. Critical vulnerabilities go undetected. Exploits happen. Protocols cut security budgets further. It’s a death spiral that benefits no one except malicious actors.

A warning from Web2

The parallels to Web2’s bug bounty failures are troubling. There, chronic underpayment and poor treatment of researchers led many skilled white hats to abandon public programs entirely. Crypto can’t afford to make the same mistake, not when trillions in value are preparing to move onchain and institutions are watching closely.

Some argue that early-stage teams can’t afford large bounties. The truth is, however, that the cost of a successful hack will always exceed that of a well-aligned bug bounty. Losing funds is expensive. Losing trust is fatal.

The path forward requires industry coordination

Protecting crypto’s security infrastructure requires recognizing that bug bounties operate on trust and incentives. Every underpriced program weakens the social contract that keeps skilled researchers on the right side of the law.

The solution isn’t radical. Maintain bounty rewards that reflect actual risk. Ensure transparent, fair treatment of researchers. Resist the temptation to treat security as a cost center rather than a value driver. 

Critically, platforms must stop incentivizing protocols to shortchange their own defense.

The decentralized economy only works when trust scales with it. If we want crypto to continue growing, with confidence from users, regulators and institutions alike, we need bounty systems that make sense, not just on paper, but in practice. Crypto thrives only to the extent that its defenders are empowered to act.

Opinion by: Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO of Immunefi.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Bitcoin may be hailed as digital gold on Wall Street, but when a real crisis hits, many will treat the cryptocurrency like fantasy play money, says Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman.

But why on earth would a crypto builder of almost a decade say such a thing?

What about all the institutional money pouring in, the billions flowing into spot Bitcoin ETFs and its narrative as a safe-haven asset?

Breitman says no matter how strong the narrative, there will always be a cohort of Bitcoin holders who will drop it when times get tough.

If people are very uncertain about their economic future, the first thing they do is sell their funny internet money and their funny stocks, the 40-year-old Frenchman, now based in London, tells Magazine.

Bitcoin will always risk being a momentum asset

That doesnt mean Breitman thinks Bitcoins a joke by any means; hes just saying what many people wont admit aloud Not everyone can be truly won over by Bitcoin.

What the market is maybe lacking is really long-term fundamental buyers of Bitcoin who will basically smooth out these momentum cycles, Breitman says.

Bitcoin is teasing a breakdown below old all-time highs at $109,300 — where will BTC price action head next?

Crypto traders are ready with BTC price targets as bulls nurse a 13% pullback from all-time highs.

Bitcoin’s key trendlines in danger

Bitcoin’s latest dive took below previous all-time highs first seen in January 2025.

That psychological level now hangs in the balance, but is not the only nearby level that observers are concerned about.

Various simple (SMA) and exponential (EMA) moving averages risk getting flipped from support to resistance as price struggles to halt its decline.

“BTC has broken below the 100 EMA on the daily chart. That’s not a good sign and could open the door for a deeper correction toward $103K,” popular trader Cryptorphic warned in an X post Tuesday.

By Kelly Cloonan

Trump Media & Technology Group, Yorkville Acquisition and Crypto.com have entered an agreement for a business combination to establish a digital-asset treasury company.

The companies said Tuesday the new company will be called Trump Media Group CRO Strategy. It will be focused on acquiring CRO, the native cryptocurrency token of the Cronos ecosystem.

At the close of the transaction, the three companies will have majority ownership of the new entity.

Expected funding for the digital-asset treasury will consist of $1 billion in CRO, $200 million in cash and $220 million cash-in mandatory exercise warrants, with an additional $5 billion equity line of credit from an affiliate of Yorkville.

"Financial markets are becoming increasingly digital every day," Trump Media Chief Executive Devin Nunes said. "Companies of all sizes and sectors are strategically planning for the future by establishing digital asset treasuries anchored by assets that have created a comprehensive value proposition and are poised for even greater utility."

Yorkville Acquisition, a special-purpose acquisition company, will apply to have its Class A ordinary shares trade on Nasdaq under the symbol MCGA. The new symbol will transfer to Trump Media Group CRO Strategy upon the closing of the business combination, the companies said.

Yorkville, Trump Media and Crypto.com have agreed to a mandatory one-year initial lock-up period on their founding shareholdings, including all warrants granted, after the close of the transaction. The initial lock-up period will be followed by an additional three-year restrictive release schedule, the companies said.

Write to Kelly Cloonan at kelly.cloonan@wsj.com

Truth Social and the company behind it, Trump Media and Technology Group Corp, announced massive adoption news for the CRO token on two fronts.

The entity linked to the current US President said it will purchase around 2% of the entire token supply by spending around $105 million for 685,427,004 CRO.

The first press release informs that the Truth Social and Truth+ platforms will introduce a rewards system for their users that will utilize the crypto.com digital wallet infrastructure and adopt CRO as a utility token.

Both sides have doubled down on their joint collaborations afterpartneringto provide ETFs earlier this year. Moreover, the two parties plan to expand their partnerships:

“Further planned partnership synergies include providing Truth users the ability to pay for subscriptions and services with their Crypto.com CRO balance, and providing free or discounted Truth+ subscriptions for users who open a Crypto.com account.”

The news that Trump Media will acquire almost 700,000,000 tokens sent the underlying asset flying. CRO traded around $0.15 after the most recent market-wide pullback before it skyrocketed to its highest level this year of just over $0.21. It has retraced slightly since then but still stands close to $0.19.

“We are proud to partner with Trump Media, an innovator in digital media, to bring the utility of CRO to the Truth Social platform. This CRO integration is a historic moment for the Cronos blockchain and a testament to the loyal community of builders dedicated to broadening access to the benefits and opportunities of crypto,” commented Crypto.com’s co-founder and CEO, Kris Marszalek.

In a separate PR, though, both parties announced the creation of Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, Inc., which will serve as a digital asset treasury firm “focused on acquisition of the native cryptocurrency token of the Cronos ecosystem.”

It will be majority-owned by Yorkville, Trump Media, and crypto.com and will purchase roughly 19% of the entire CRO supply ($1 billion worth of the asset).

Trump Media and Technology Group, the owner of US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform, has announced a business combination with cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com and the blank check company Yorkville Acquisition.

Trump Media, Crypto.com and Yorkville Acquisition entered into a definitive agreement to jointly establish Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, according to an official announcement on Tuesday.

The newly launched entity will be a digital asset treasury company focused on the acquisition of Cronos (CRO), the native cryptocurrency of the Cronos blockchain, developed by Crypto.com.

Majority-owned by Trump Media, Crypto.com, and Yorkville, Trump Media Group CRO Strategy aims to build a treasury of at least $6.42 billion.

“Largest publicly traded CRO treasury”

According to the announcement, Trump Media Group CRO Strategy will fund its digital asset treasury with $1B in CRO tokens, $420 million in cash and warrants, plus a $5 billion credit line from an affiliate of Yorkville.

The capital would make CRO Strategy the “first and largest publicly traded CRO treasury company,” the companies said in the announcement, adding that it would potentially become the “largest digital asset treasury company to market cap ratio in history.”

To support the long-term commitment to Trump Media Group CRO Strategy, the three partners agreed to a mandatory one-year initial lock-up period on their founding shareholdings. The lock-up will include all granted warrants, following the closing of the business combination.

An additional three-year restrictive release schedule is expected to follow the initial lock-up period.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.