Recently, I was asked to explain what a bounty is within the context of the cryptocurrency universe. At least, I assume that is what was being requested - otherwise, I'd simply direct you to South Park's excellent episode covering the topic from a Hall-Monitor perspective:
Bounties in the cryptocurrency world are a way to crowdsource labor for some of the initial operating costs of launching a project or currency. Some coins start as ideas primarily executed by one or a few programmers - almost none have a complete staff to handle a wide variety of operational issues from translation to marketing. Bounties help solve this problem.
Bounties are paid to "freelance" workers who complete projects that help these many blockchain startups. For example, do you know Korean? You can probably find a bounty for translating a whitepaper to Korean. If you do so, and submit the finished result to the project, you can expect to be paid out of the bounty fund (assuming you are dealing with honest operators and an unclaimed bounty.)
Bounties are almost always paid in the currency of the new project - if you do a project for ABC token, expect to be paid in ABC token. This makes them highly speculative - your bounty reward could be far higher or far lower than you initially calculate, depending on the market performance of the project you choose to do work for.
Here is an example page from ICODrops.com, one website where you can track bounties, showing a variety of projects and the type of bounties they currently have available:
Each coin also has a link to the BitcoinTalk thread for each coin. This is generally the original posting place for many of these projects (think of them as the "Genesis Threads.") From there, you can research any existing bounties on the project, check which have been claimed - basically, any information you might want to look for an update on.
Many projects track their bounties on things like Google Spreadsheets. Make sure to check the thread before simply taking on a bounty you see listed at another website. It's possible someone else has already claimed that bounty, or posted a status update that they are partway through the project. You don't want to double up on work, as only the first person to fulfill a specific task bounty is going to get the reward.
Yours truly has actually participated in a bounty program and offered my writing skills to an up-and-coming token project. When this project goes public, I'll be sure to post about it on my blog and confirm my bounty payout.
Remember that bounties are speculative - they are a great way to get some extra crypto for free if you have talents, but there are plenty of risks. The project could prove to be of no value, making your bounty tokens worthless. The team could abscond or drop the project. Someone else could submit the same completed bounty just before you do. Take these into account when choosing how to spend your valuable time!
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Sources: Google, ICODrops.com
Copyright: A&E, South Park ICODrops.com, BitcoinTalk.org