Back in the days, governments would announce rewards for capturing certain individuals, such notices were called bounties. The individuals who captured these criminals for obtaining the reward were called bounty hunters. The prevalence of bounty hunters and bounties lives on but within a different context.
What is Bounty hunting?
In the cryptosphere, a bounty program is an offer made often by blockchain startups to incentivise users to perform tasks for the promotion and improvement of their product. Users can receive their incentives for promoting the product in the native ICO token, fiat or Bitcoin/Ethereum. There are several bounty programs which can help an average bounty hunter amass a fortune. However, it is important to remember, all that glitters is not gold. The cryptosphere is riddled with tons of scams. Thus, it is essential to first set up some measures for analysing the project and then carry forward the process for bounty hunting.
How to be a successful Bounty hunter?
1.Verifying the Credibility of the Project
It is very essential to test the credibility of the project and not accept any bounties without careful scrutiny. The easiest way to find out the viability of the project is to look at the team.
When looking for a project, the achievements of the team members can be found out on the internet. One may also check out their LinkedIn profiles. If something is found to be fishy regarding the competency of the team, the project can be considered unworthy. However, it may not be the best solution to be extremely critical of the achievements, but if the project looks too good to be true, it is in the best interest of the bounty hunter to leave it.
2.Pyramid Scheme Resemblance
An infamous case of the pyramid scheme is Bitconnect. The initial interest in the investors was piqued due to guaranteed profits and rewards. The whole plan was neatly laid down on their website. It is in the best interest of the bounty hunter to immediately discard such projects. Any experienced bounty hunter can easily foretell that there are no guarantees in the crypto world.
3.Quality of the Whitepaper
A white paper essentially forms the backbone of any ICO. A whitepaper can help potential investors gauge the project.Most ICOs believe that an average investor will not pay any heed to their whitepaper. Consequently, the work of writing the whitepaper is outsourced to freelance writers who might end up creating works of art, rather than providing an apt technical analysis.
Here is an extract from the whitepaper by “Arbitrage Crypto Trader”:However, the arbitration did not die definitively. He again in favor, thanks to the appearance of cryptocurrency. All of us see that right now quotations bitkoyna on different stock exchanges differ from each other by 1-5%. And for some of the Altocums, the difference can sometimes be as high as 50%.
Thus, an ICO which doesn’t have a sound technical whitepaper must be overlooked.
4.The purpose behind the token
Since the bounty hunter will most probably be paid in native tokens, it is of extreme importance to ensure that the tokens have the potential to appreciate exponentially. The token utility can be carefully analysed by simply asking if the ICO’s token is taken away, does the business model fall apart. If the answer is no, a token is not required. A quality business model would rather exploit their tokens to the maximum limit.
Let’s examine each of the roles that a token can take up:
Right
When a holder acquires a token, he obtains a certain amount of rights within the ecosystem.
Value Exchange
The tokens establish an internal economic system within the project. The buyers and sellers can trade value within the ecosystem with the tokens. This in turn, helps individuals gain rewards upon completing particular tasks. The creation and maintenance of individual internal economies is one of the essential tasks of the tokens.
Toll
Tokens can also act as a toll gateway for an individual to use certain functionalities of a particular system. For instance, in Golem an individual needs GNT( golem tokens) to access the benefits of the Golem supercomputer.
Function
The token can additionally enable the holders to improvise the user experience inside the confines of the ecosystem. For instance, in Brave (a web browser), holders of the BAT (tokens used in Brave) will get the rights to enrich customer experience by using their tokens to add advertisements or other attention based services on the Brave platform.
Currency
The tokens should have a considerable value which can be further used to conduct transactions both inside and outside the ecosystem.
Earnings
The token can ensure equitable distribution of profits and other financial benefits among investors. If a business seeks to maximise token utility they need to have more than one of these properties. The more properties the project has, the more value the token will bring forth to the ecosystem. Subsequently, the bounty reward would be more valuable.
5.Finding an appropriate Bounty
There are different kinds crypto bounties in the cryptosphere, some of the most popular crypto bounties include:
Social Media Bounties- This requires an individual to post certain promotional material on his/her social media and they get paid accordingly.
Translation Bounties- The whitepaper or the website can be translated into another language for greater outreach.
Blog/Video post- A blog or a video post can also be made for promotion of a particular ICO.
Bitcointalk signature bounties- ”Bitcointalk signature bounties-Bitcointalk is one of the most famous and established cryptocurrency forums.
A user “HiringYou” defines signature bounties as “It is very simple to join a signature bounty. Every campaign provides a signature and avatar and sometimes pm also. First of all, you should copy the signature provided for your rank and then you should go to your profile and on the left-hand side you will find an option named “Forum profile information”.
A bounty hunting campaign can thus be joined on Bitcointalk and rewards can be reaped for completing certain tasks.
For a multilingual enthusiast, a translation bounty would be perfect. Whereas, for a good content creator having a large following blog/video posts would be suitable. Needless to say, for an individual with a large following on Twitter, social media bounties are the best option.
6.The prowess of Networking
A bounty hunter must always seek to establish connections with the developers of the project they are interested in. A study about the project and new ways to improvise on the project and business model can be useful for the ICO. Thus, establishing connections can accelerate a crypto bounty hunting campaign. It will give a clear insight into the project, additionally, the team might reward the hunter for his/her work. The possibility of being a precious member of the team cannot be completely disregarded.
Undoubtedly, competent and experienced bounty hunters are the need of the hour. They are readily contributing their bit for the evolution of the cryptosphere. By adhering to safety measures and having a keen eye for projects, ICO bounty hunters can amass a fortune.
