Meeting the Payout Criteria

How to make sure you get paid for your findings

Previously, anyone could sign up as a Watson, join a contest, and get paid for any valid issues they submit. The only caveat is that there was a USDC penalty for invalid issues.

The USDC penalty is now gone, and it's replaced by 2 "Audit Contest Payout Criteria."

If you don't pass either of these criteria at any time, your USDC payouts will be withheld until you pass both criteria, at which point they'll be paid out in full.

Audit Contest Payout Criteria

1. 2 Valid Issues

Until you've submitted 2 valid issues with your Watson account, you will not receive USDC payouts.

Although this rule is new, it will look at your account's lifetime record to see if >=2 valid issues have been submitted.

2. Issues Ratio

Your "issues ratio" must be >=20% otherwise you will not receive USDC payouts.

The "issues ratio" is defined as:

# of valid issues submitted / total # of issues submitted

If less than 20% of the issues you submit are valid, your USDC payouts will be withheld until this ratio gets back above 20%. This is a lifetime ratio on your account, so it looks at every contest you ever participate in!

Because this rule is new, it will only look at contests that started on or after July 1st, 2023.

What's the point of these criteria?

The intention is to limit the number of invalid issues submitted to Sherlock. Sherlock receives hundreds of invalid issues in every contest and it requires a lot of time and resources for Sherlock to review each one of them. By implementing these criteria, Sherlock hopes that more of a contest's cost (in USDC) can be directed towards Watsons who are finding important vulnerabilities, and not on reviewing invalid issues.

The "Issues Ratio" obviously wants to prevent a single account from submitting infinite invalid issues.

The "2 Valid Issues" criteria is in place to prevent people from creating infinite accounts and submitting 1 issue in each account (hoping a few accounts get paid).