AI drives surge in ‘bug bounty’ reports, but ‘slop’ is rising too

HackerOne, one of the largest bug bounty platforms in the world, reported there were 85,000 valid bounty submissions in 2025, up 7% from the previous year.

Crypto protocols have warned that an increase in AI use has led to a flood of bogus bug bounty submissions, putting a strain on teams trying to identify real threats to their protocols. 

Bug bounties are a system to reward “good” hackers for submitting reports about potential vulnerabilities and are popular in the crypto industry. AI has now made it easier to sift through large amounts of code to find possible bugs, though AI is also known to hallucinate. 

“AI is changing the way that bug bounty programs must operate,” said Barry Plunkett, co-CEO of Cosmos Labs, on Tuesday, responding to a bug bounty hunter who accused the protocol of ignoring their vulnerability report. 

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