🪙 Deposits for Bounty Submissions

To improve the overall quality of submissions and discourage spam or low-effort reports, Cantina now requires a wallet balance (deposit) to submit to bounties.


💡 Overview

When submitting to a bounty, researchers must maintain a minimum wallet balance in their Cantina account. Each bounty may require a different staking amount, defined by the bounty creator.

  • Not all bounties require a deposit.

  • The bounty home page will clearly indicate when one is required.

    Example: Deposit required: $100

This ensures only serious submissions are made and helps us maintain a fair, high-quality ecosystem.


🧭 Why Deposits Are Required

We’ve introduced deposits to:

  • Deter low-effort or AI-generated submissions.

  • Reduce spam and abuse from repeat offenders.

  • Encourage higher-quality findings and thoughtful participation.

  • Discourage over-inflated severity ratings on clearly low-severity findings.

⚠️ Note: Deposits will only be slashed in specific cases such as:

  • Submissions that are clearly low-effort or LLM-generated.

  • Users repeatedly abusing the system.

  • Findings where the reported severity is intentionally exaggerated (e.g., calling an informational issue "critical").

Regular rejected findings will not lose their deposit.


💰 Maintaining Your Balance

You’ll need to ensure your wallet maintains enough balance to meet the staking amount for the bounty you want to submit to.

If your balance is insufficient, you’ll be unable to submit until funds are added.


🔧 How to Add Balance

  1. You’ll find your Ethereum mainnet address under the “Account Balance” section.

  2. Send USDC to that address to increase your balance.

Tip: Transactions must be on Ethereum Mainnet and in USDC, not any other token or network.


📉 Slashing & Refunds

  • Slashing occurs only for low-effort or system-abusing submissions.

  • Normal rejected submissions do not lose deposits.

  • You can withdraw unused balances in the future after unlock.


🧾 Example

Scenario
Deposit Status

Valid submission

Deposit refunded

Legitimate but invalid submission

Deposit refunded

Spam/Low effort or AI-generated submission

Deposit slashed

Intentional over-inflated severity on low/informational severity issue

Deposit slashed

Repeat abusive behavior

Deposit slashed & possible account action


In case of any queries please reach out to https://support.cantina.xyz/

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