Thank you to everyone who took the time to engage with our POIDH bounty “Encrypt The Mempool! Provide feedback on the draft EIPs”. We received six claims, and we want to share where the review landed.
The Review
Our core protocol devs spent two full working days going through all six submissions in detail against the draft EIPs and existing literature. We wanted to give each one a fair reading.
Our assessment is that five of the six did not surface new insight; they largely restated material already present in the EIPs and the surrounding discussion. One submission may have identified a few areas where EIP-8184 is light on detail, which we appreciate and will look at. Across all six, the submissions read as substantially AI generated rather than as review from someone working closely with the specifications.
Outcome
On that basis, we have decided not to award the prize. That is not a reflection on anyone’s effort or good faith, and we know several people spent real time here. It reflects the specific bar we set for this bounty: new, actionable technical feedback on the draft EIPs.
Thank you
Encrypting the mempool is one of the more interesting problems in Ethereum right now, and we hope the people who dug into these drafts came away having learned something about the effort. The specifications are public and the work continues, so there is plenty of room to keep following along or to contribute directly.
We do still want outside eyes on this work. For a future round we will probably define narrower and more concrete deliverables, which should make it easier for contributors to know what we are looking for and easier for us to reward it. If you have thoughts on how best to structure that, we would genuinely like to hear them in this thread.
Bounty Funders
Anyone who contributed funds to the open bounty may withdraw them.