Enter the Hydra: Towards Principled Bug Bounties and Exploit-Resistant Smart Contracts
summary
Hydra transforms contracts into N-of-N replicated versions and replaces majority voting with a consensus fault manager that aborts on disagreement, creating an exploit gap (NASA-derived gaps ~4,409 for 3 heads, ~34,000 for 4) so attackers expect expected payout A/gap and prefer small bounties. Implementation includes an EVM-to-EVM transpiler, a meta contract proxying external effects, deployed ERC20 and Monty-Hall contracts, EVM test-suite and live-data validation, a live $1,000 bounty, and a front-running countermeasure called Submarine Commitments.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00The smart contract problem
- 2:05N-version programming model
- 6:17The Hydra framework
- 8:03Secure bug bounty incentives
- 13:03Hydra implementation
- 16:04Security analysis and conclusion
- 19:43Q&A session








