A bounty is a reward allocated for the completion of a highly specific task. In the “Old West”, the government used to set a bounty on the capture of criminals. Today, this concept is often used in the context of online marketing, software development and consulting.

What is a bounty hunter?

In the “Old West”, a bounty hunter was a person who captures fugitives and criminals for a monetary reward (bounty). Today, bounty hunters perform tasks in exchange for a bounty. The bounty is typically paid in a crypto currency upon successful completion of the bounty task. Bounty hunters typically submit work and then receive payment if the work is approved.

ICO bounty campaigns.

In the ICO space, a bounty program is an offer made by many blockchain startups which enables users to receive compensation for performing marketing tasks, reporting bugs or improving a product or service. Blockchain start-ups that plan to hold a crowdsale, often allocate a percentage of their total tokens to such a campaign or a fixed amount in Ether/Bitcoin.

Bounties can be found on forums like Bitcointalk and bounty networks like Bounty0x.

There are rarely any barriers of entry and the only thing a bounty hunter needs to do in order to participate is submitting a link to his work. This submission will then be checked by the admin of the campaign who will decide if the submission deserves a reward or not.

Popular bounty tasks.

Bounty tasks range from simple social media promotions, to highly technical bug bounties. Here’s a list with some of the most popular bounties sorted by average payout in decreasing order.

Bug bounties

YouTube bounties

Article and content creation bounties

Translation bounties

Improvement bounties

Airdrops

Bitcointalk signature bounties

Facebook bounties

Twitter bounties

Case study.

The bounty campaigns launched by Status and Bancor where by far the most successful programs up to date. Both start-ups distributed over $1mln worth of their native token to bounty hunters.

However, impressive rewards are not only earned at “Monster ICOs”. Many smaller projects have also paid (and are still paying) several hundred dollars worth of tokens per contributor.

Some tips and tricks.

For the past couple months I’ve been quite active as a bounty hunter in the crypto space. I really enjoy it and I think it is an attractive option for startups to interact with and build a community around their product.

In that time, I learned one big lesson: Most bounty programs are not worth your time.

Before joining a bounty program, bounty hunters should analyze and familiarize themselves with the project that is holding the bounty campaign.

There’s no point in receiving millions of tokens as bounty rewards if they are not worth anything or if the team is unlikely to distribute rewards to bounty hunters.

Here’s my personal list of red flags for bounty programs. I encourage you to use a similar approach, your time is too valuable to spend it contributing to scams or worthless coins.

No whitepaper

Start-up uses Google/ Instagram ads to promote ICO

Check the team. Do you trust them that they will pay your reward?

Token mechanics. Do they really need a token?

Typically, rewards are paid out to all bounty hunters on the same day. If you want to exchange your tokens for BTC or ETH, do so ASAP, or wait until 2 weeks after the distribution. Price sometimes corrects after rewards are distributed to hunters since some may sell.

For more information about Bounty0x.