📊 Bounty Rate Reduction Schedule — Rates Scale As RTC Value Appreciates

[Scottcjn]

📊 Bounty Rate Reduction Schedule — As RTC Value Appreciates

We're at ~761 wallet holders today. Per the published RTC milestone schedule:

• 1,000 holders → reference rate $0.15
• 2,000 holders → reference rate $0.20
• Real market → discovered price

When each RTC is worth more in USD-equivalent, per-bounty awards scale DOWN proportionally so the value paid per finding stays consistent. This is how a healthy economy works — rates aren't pegged to a nominal RTC number, they're pegged to the USD value of the work.

Current rates (now, $0.10 ref)

Bounty	RTC
Generic merged PR	5
Critical bug (#2867)	100
High	50
Medium	25
Low	10
Bug report (#305)	5-15
Star/fork/onboard	1-3

At 1,000 holders ($0.15 ref) — ~67% of current

Bounty	RTC
Merge	3-4
Critical	65
High	33
Medium	17
Low	7
Bug report	3-10
Star/fork	1

At 2,000 holders ($0.20 ref) — 50% of current

Bounty	RTC
Merge	2-3
Critical	50
High	25
Medium	13
Low	5
Bug report	3-8
Star	0.5 (batch only)

Important — Fairness rules

1. Not retroactive: work submitted under the current rate gets the current rate, even if the milestone hits before it's paid.
2. Announced ahead: each milestone gets a 24-48 hour heads-up before the new rate kicks in.
3. One-way ratchet: rates ONLY go down with token appreciation, never go back up if holder count drops.
4. Market overrides: once RTC has a discoverable DEX/CEX price, USD-anchor takes over entirely.

Why now?

Daily distribution has been hitting 1-3k RTC/day during active sweeps. At $0.10 ref that's $100-$300/day. At $0.20 ref the same nominal distribution would be $200-$600/day — unsustainable without scaling rates down.

The token getting more valuable is good news. The bounty program adapts.

Active bounties: #2819 Red Team UTXO, #305 Bug Report, #2786 RustChain Comparison, #12442-#12445 (new comparison set), #160 Beacon Tutorial, #2782 PR Review, and all standard star/fork/onboard bounties.

cc bountyhunters who've been active recently: @sirakinb @qingfeng312 @MolhamHamwi @BossChaos @jhdev2026 @yujinju666 @haoyousun60-create @FlintLeng @SrEscudero @createkr @HuiNeng6

[Scottcjn]

📊 Rate adjustment APPLIED — $0.10 → $0.15 reference (2026-06-12)

RTC's reference value rose from $0.10 to $0.15, so to hold the same USD value per finding, all bounty RTC amounts have been reduced by ×2/3 (10/15 = 0.667). Examples: 15 RTC → 10, 25 → 17, 50 → 33, 100 → 67, 200-pool → 133.

Done: 99 open bounty issue titles updated to the new amounts. The title amount is the authoritative payout. Some issue bodies still show pre-adjustment numbers — those are superseded by the title + this notice; we'll true them up opportunistically.

Not adjusted: the six bounties posted today at the current rate (#13949–#13954) and in-flight framework slots (#13952) where identical work was already paid at the posted rate — changing those mid-claim would be unfair to contributors already delivering.

USD value per bounty is unchanged; only the nominal RTC dropped because each RTC is worth more now.