Filippo Valsorda today announced a contest: "Crack the NSA’s five SHA-1 hashes at the heart of NIST's elliptic curves" and win a prize currently at up to $12k:

"The NIST elliptic curves that power much of modern cryptography were generated in the late ‘90s by hashing seeds provided by the NSA. How were the seeds generated? Rumor has it that they are in turn hashes of English sentences, but the person who picked them, Dr. Jerry Solinas, passed away in early 2023 leaving behind a cryptographic mystery, some conspiracy theories, and an historical password cracking challenge."

Cracking any one of the five hashes nets half the prize money.

Will there be any payouts (either for one hash or for all five) six months after the start of the contest?