Recently, a popular bounty marketplace, BountySource, stopped paying out bounties to developers. Many users reported outstanding or significantly delayed payouts. [1] [2]. The entities or persons running BountySource likely misused the escrowed funds being held for bounties. Bounty posters and developers have been searching for an alternative.

But the risk of exit scams or insolvency are inherent to all centralzied escrow agent. That's why most jurisdictions place onerous fiduciary duties on escrow agents to faithfully hold funds for safekeeping and deliver them according to the terms of the deal. But it can take time and money to get compensation through the courts and usually recovery is for pennies on the dollar. The costs of legal action outweighs any bounty amounts lost through embezzlement.

So some existing platforms, like Algora, don't bother with escrow. But, as one former BountySource user pointed out, that just shifts the trust to the bounty grantor.

Replit provides a bounty marketplace that does escrow bounty funds, but payouts are not instant or free. Users are awarded Replit's token (cycles) for solving bounties, and must request payout in USD by email. Users are charged a 25% withdrawal fee for any bounty funds earned, and there is a minimum withdrawal amount of $350. So, not only are you trusting that Replit won't go bankrupt, you are paying through the nose for that risk.

Resolvr takes the centralized agent out of escrow. It doesn't control or possesses the bounty funds. Instead, Resolvr leverages bitcoin's native programmability to attest to whether the bounty has been solved, triggering payout automatically. This removes the need to trust the platform or grantor.

And Resolvr doesn't decide whether the bounty has been solved; a panel of crowdsourced developers performs the review.

Resolvr is the first bounty marketplace to offer dependable escrow and payouts, as well as transparent dispute resolution. Oh, and it's cheaper than the existing alternatives.

You can sign up to be an alpha tester today! And check out the GitHub and join the conversation on discord.

Get your bounties ready!