The Ethereum bug bounty bot enables community-driven development by offering Ether to solution-contributors.
The development team behind Status, a decentralized mobile-messaging browser for Ethereum, has developed a tool designed to foster open-source software development. The company announced the first alpha release of CommitETH in a press release and blog post that defines the tool as “a Github bounty bot that enables token holders to incentivize pull request submissions by attaching ETH or any ERC20-compatible token to open issues in Github.”
As ETHNews previously reported:
“A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many websites and software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those pertaining to exploits and vulnerabilities. These programs allow the developers to discover and resolve bugs before the general public is aware of them, preventing incidents of widespread abuse.”
Because most blockchain technology is decentralized and the majority of platforms are still in the early stages of development, bugs are prevalent across many decentralized applications (Dapps) – they have come to be expected and are part of the development process.
Status intends to solve the issue of bugs through the introduction of CommitETH, hoping that the tool will play a vital role in the evolution of a decentralized business models’ governance and decision-making processes.
Bug Hunting
CommitETH is a bot that scans for issues within any open source project containing the label ‘bounty.’ Any user or project maintainer can assign a bounty to any open source project, regardless of the type of blockchain used. Once this is done, a multi-signature wallet is deployed to the respective network assigning CommitETH and the project maintainer as signatories.
Example of an automated comment. Do not send ETH to this address.
Along with the wallet address and balance of Ether (ETH) attached to the bounty, a QR code is generated and posted as a comment to the issue. When a developer solves the issue and completes the bounty, the comment is updated with a new image signaling the balance change and that the bounty is complete. This is done without any additional fees (except gas) charged to users.
Building A Strong Ecosystem
Currently, CommitETH only supports Ether (ETH), but will soon be implementing changes to support ERC20-compatible tokens so that anyone can freely add tokens of their choice to issues for any project. The first release is running on the Ropsten Testnet where users can experiment and provide feedback.
Status will also utilize the tool to solve their own bugs and is adamant about fostering community-driven development models that contribute to the evolution of Ethereum-based platforms and Dapps.
Status Co-founder, Jarrad Hope, said:
“For us CommitETH is a path not only towards community driven development of Status itself, but also a way we can help foster the movement for open source in general – both of these things are really exciting for us. It's also important to us that CommitETH becomes fully decentralized, and we'll be working towards this in the coming months.
