Horizen is an EVM-native, privacy-first blockchain ecosystem: an OP Stack L3 that settles to Base, enabling regulatory-compliant, auditable private execution for onchain businesses and privacy-minded users. ZEN, the ecosystem's governance and utility token, lives as an ERC-20 on Base and on the Horizen L3. This bug bounty program focuses on the official ZEN staking program: the ZenStaker smart contracts and the staking web application.
Runnable PoC Required
KYC required
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Assets in Scope
Impacts in Scope
NFT-related and governance-voting impacts are not applicable to this program in Phase 1: there are no NFTs, and delegation surrogates are non-voting (ZenDelegationSurrogate), so governance-manipulation impacts cannot arise. Server-side web impacts do not apply to the staking frontend, which is a static export with no server runtime.
Direct theft of any user funds, whether at-rest or in-motion, other than unclaimed yield
Permanent freezing of funds
Execute arbitrary system commands
Subdomain takeover with already-connected wallet interaction
Direct theft of user funds
Malicious interactions with an already-connected wallet, such as:
- Modifying transaction arguments or parameters
- Substituting contract addresses
- Submitting malicious transactions
Theft of unclaimed yield
Permanent freezing of unclaimed yield
Temporary freezing of funds
Injecting/modifying the static content on the target application without JavaScript (persistent), such as:
- HTML injection without JavaScript
- Replacing existing text with arbitrary text
- Arbitrary file uploads, etc.
Out of scope
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT - PoC EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT (local-only): All proof-of-concept code must be executed exclusively against a local environment - an Anvil/Foundry/Hardhat node, or a local fork of testnet or mainnet state. Broadcasting exploit or attack transactions to ANY public network (mainnet or testnet) is strictly prohibited: a public transaction is public disclosure of the exploit and can be replayed by anyone. Violating this voids reward eligibility and breaches the rules of engagement. Public networks may be read (state inspection, forking) but never written to with exploit payloads. For frontend findings, do not broadcast transactions to a public chain; run the dApp locally against a local chain (see the repo README) or limit the demonstration to client-side behavior with no on-chain writes. A vulnerability whose exploit has already been broadcast to any public network (by the reporter or anyone else) is treated as publicly disclosed and handled under the public-disclosure rules, not as a confidential submission.
REPORT QUALITY / ANTI-SPAM: Reports must demonstrate impact against the exact in-scope code (pinned commit) or deployed contracts. Reports are closed as invalid without further review if they: (a) describe code paths, functions, or behaviors that do not exist in the in-scope code; (b) re-report findings from the published audit reports or the documented known issues; (c) report generic framework CVEs without a working PoC against the deployed asset - note the staking frontend is a static export with NO server runtime, so server-side Next.js issues (middleware bypass, SSRF, RSC issues, image-optimization DoS) do not apply; or (d) are LLM-generated boilerplate without evidence the reporter executed the PoC. Tool-assisted research is welcome; the burden of demonstrating a real, reproducible impact is on the reporter.
GENERAL OUT OF SCOPE: The completed ZEN migration (ZENDBackupVault, EONBackupVault, migration tooling), finished 2025-07-23. Test code, deployment scripts, e2e tests, CI configuration. Vela and all vela-* repositories (in development, not production). Third-party infrastructure: Base, Caldera rollup infra (sequencer, bridge hub), LayerZero OFT contracts, Goldsky subgraph hosting, Cloudflare Pages, Stork oracle, CoinGecko API. Chain-level Horizen L3 / rollup issues (this is a staking-only program). The ZEN ERC-20 / OFT token contracts themselves (staking-only scope; may be added in a later revision). Subgraph hosting/infrastructure (Goldsky) and subgraph data-staleness or unavailability (the dApp shows a health banner by design; write paths never depend on the subgraph). Best-practice/informational findings without demonstrated impact; automated scanner output without validation. Attacks requiring compromised admin keys / trusted multisigs. Malicious clone/phishing sites are in scope TO REPORT (we want to know) and rewarded at our discretion, but not severity-rated as program vulnerabilities.
Web & App specific
- Theoretical impacts without any proof or demonstration
- Impacts involving attacks requiring physical access to the victim device
- Impacts involving attacks requiring access to the local network of the victim
- Reflected plain text injection (e.g. url parameters, path, etc.)
- This does not exclude reflected HTML injection with or without JavaScript
- This does not exclude persistent plain text injection
- Any impacts involving self-XSS
- Captcha bypass using OCR without impact demonstration
- CSRF with no state modifying security impact (e.g. logout CSRF)
- Impacts related to missing HTTP Security Headers (such as X-FRAME-OPTIONS) or cookie security flags (such as “httponly”) without demonstration of impact
- Server-side non-confidential information disclosure, such as IPs, server names, and most stack traces
- Impacts causing only the enumeration or confirmation of the existence of users or tenants
- Impacts caused by vulnerabilities requiring un-prompted, in-app user actions that are not part of the normal app workflows
- Lack of SSL/TLS best practices
- Impacts that only require DDoS
- UX and UI impacts that do not materially disrupt use of the platform
- Impacts primarily caused by browser/plugin defects
- Leakage of non sensitive API keys (e.g. Etherscan, Infura, Alchemy, etc.)
- Any vulnerability exploit requiring browser bugs for exploitation (e.g. CSP bypass)
- SPF/DMARC misconfigured records)
- Missing HTTP Headers without demonstrated impact
- Automated scanner reports without demonstrated impact
- UI/UX best practice recommendations
- Non-future-proof NFT rendering
All categories
- Impacts requiring attacks that the reporter has already exploited themselves, leading to damage
- Impacts caused by attacks requiring access to leaked keys/credentials
- Impacts caused by attacks requiring access to privileged addresses (including, but not limited to: governance and strategist contracts) without additional modifications to the privileges attributed
- Impacts relying on attacks involving the depegging of an external stablecoin where the attacker does not directly cause the depegging due to a bug in code
- Mentions of secrets, access tokens, API keys, private keys, etc. in Github will be considered out of scope without proof that they are in-use in production
- Best practice recommendations
- Feature requests
- Impacts on test files and configuration files unless stated otherwise in the bug bounty program
- Impacts requiring phishing or other social engineering attacks against project's employees and/or customers