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CoW Protocol

The CoW team, for and on behalf of and at the expense of CoW DAO, is running a bug bounty program focused on CoW Protocol, a fully permissionless protocol that leverages batch auctions to provide MEV protection, plus integrates with on-chain liquidity sources to offer traders the best prices.

ETH
Gnosis
Defi
AMM
DEX
Solidity
Maximum Bounty
$1,000,000
Live Since
15 June 2021
Last Updated
20 December 2024
  • PoC required

Rewards

CoW Protocol provides rewards in ETH on Ethereum, denominated in USD.

Rewards by Threat Level

Smart Contract
Critical
Max: $1,000,000Min: $50,000
Primacy of Rules
High
Max: $50,000Min: $10,000
Primacy of Rules
Medium
Max: $10,000Min: $1,000
Primacy of Rules
Critical Reward Calculation

Mainnet assets:

Reward amount is 10% of the funds directly affected up to a maximum of:

$1,000,000

Minimum reward to discourage security researchers from withholding a bug report:

$50,000

Rewards are distributed according to the impact of the vulnerability based on the Immunefi Vulnerability Severity Classification System V2.2. This is a simplified 5-level scale, with separate scales for websites/apps and smart contracts/blockchains, encompassing everything from consequence of exploitation to privilege required to likelihood of a successful exploit.

The CoW Protocol bounty program considers a number of variables in determining rewards. Determinations of eligibility, score, and all terms related to an award are at the sole and final discretion of the CoW team bug bounty panel, on behalf of CoW DAO.

The CoW core team (whether paid directly or indirectly, incl. Grant Core Contributor and including external auditors) including current and former team members, which includes anyone currently or formerly paid by CoW DAO or its Service Providers as well as Gnosis, are not eligible for rewards.

In order to be eligible for a reward, bug reports must include an explanation of how the bug can be reproduced, a failing test case, a valid scenario in which the bug can be exploited. Critical vulnerabilities with all of these have a maximum reward of USD 1 000 000.

Payouts are processed on behalf of and at the expense of CoW DAO and are denominated in USD. However, payouts are done in ETH, on Ethereum mainnet.

Once the CoW team bug bounty panel accepts an eligible bug, the team shall have the right to decide on and implement the mitigation and publishing steps of the eligible bug on their own terms and timeline. By submitting a bug report on this platform, the submitter agrees to extend our timeline for resolving the issue (and to not disclose the report elsewhere or to any other party keeping the information confidential and without exploiting the vulnerability).

Program Overview

The CoW team, for and on behalf of and at the expense of CoW DAO, is running a bug bounty program focused on CoW Protocol, a fully permissionless protocol that leverages batch auctions to provide MEV protection, plus integrates with on-chain liquidity sources to offer traders the best prices.

For background information, please refer to the docs.

The bug bounty program is focused around the smart contracts and is mostly concerned with the loss of user funds. It is a seamless continuation of the bug bounty program formerly run by Gnosis.

KYC not required

No KYC information is required for payout processing.

Proof of Concept

Proof of concept is always required for all severities.

Prohibited Activities

Default prohibited activities
  • Any testing on mainnet or public testnet deployed code; all testing should be done on local-forks of either public testnet or mainnet
  • Any testing with pricing oracles or third-party smart contracts
  • Attempting phishing or other social engineering attacks against our employees and/or customers
  • Any testing with third-party systems and applications (e.g. browser extensions) as well as websites (e.g. SSO providers, advertising networks)
  • Any denial of service attacks that are executed against project assets
  • Automated testing of services that generates significant amounts of traffic
  • Public disclosure of an unpatched vulnerability in an embargoed bounty
  • Any other actions prohibited by the Immunefi Rules

Feasibility Limitations

The project may be receiving reports that are valid (the bug and attack vector are real) and cite assets and impacts that are in scope, but there may be obstacles or barriers to executing the attack in the real world. In other words, there is a question about how feasible the attack really is. Conversely, there may also be mitigation measures that projects can take to prevent the impact of the bug, which are not feasible or would require unconventional action and hence, should not be used as reasons for downgrading a bug's severity.

Therefore, Immunefi has developed a set of feasibility limitation standards which by default states what security researchers, as well as projects, can or cannot cite when reviewing a bug report.