Will there be smart contract bounties for formalized mathematics on a blockchain before May 2024
34%
chance
This market resolves YES if there is some public blockchain smart contract or contracts offering at least a 100USD equivalent in bounties for formalized proofs of mathematical theorems by the market close date. A few stipulations:
* The blockchain in question has to be permissionless - it should be possible for an individual with the formalized proof in hand to obtain the bounty without going through any KYC process (excluding, possibly, the process of obtaining some cryptocurrency to pay a transaction fee).
* For the purposes of this question, a smart contract running on a "Layer 2" platform such as a rollup counts as a smart contract.
* The proof doesn't necessarily have to be extractable from the transaction - For example, if the contract accepts a SNARKed proof of the existence of a formal proof, that counts.
* The theorems for which the bounties are offered must be intentional. One might perversely define any bug in any smart contract to be a bounty for a proof of the bug expressed as an exploit - that doesn't count.
* Moreover theorems must be "mathematical". One could imagine an intentionally-made bug bounty for a program with a smart contract that rewards a proof of an exploit, but that wouldn't count: This focuses more on formalizations of problems which are more explicitly mathematical. Examples might include:
* Open problems such as P vs NP, or the Riemann Hypothesis.
* Resolved-but-complicated theorems such as FLT.
* Easier mathematical theorems such as the infinitude of primes.
* Blurring the line for the above might be a bounty for a proof-of-correctness for some cryptographic scheme which relies heavily on mathematical concepts. In this case, I'd probably use my best judgement, but as a rule of thumb, I would say that if the theorem can be found in the literature somewhere, it's probably mathematical enough.