Feature-unlock payout structure rewards breadth and depth across five upcoming XRPL releases, part of Sherlock’s broader engagement with Ripple

A $550,000 competitive audit contest opened this week on Sherlock, the Web3 security company whose researcher network has become one of the most watched venues in blockchain security. The engagement, run in collaboration with Ripple, covers five feature areas of upcoming XRP Ledger functionality and runs through April 27.

This is Sherlock’s first audit contest on the XRP Ledger and the largest non-EVM protocol review the company has hosted to date. It is also the open, adversarial-review phase of a broader lifecycle security engagement with Ripple, a model Sherlock has been building across clients including Morpho, Sky (formerly MakerDAO), and Optimism. The approach treats protocol safety as a continuous process that spans development, launch, and live operations rather than a single pre-launch checkpoint.

How the Pool Unlocks

Unlike traditional competitive audits that distribute a flat pool across all findings, Sherlock’s feature-unlock structure ties each of the five covered feature areas to an independent unlock tier based on the highest valid severity found within it. A Low unlocks $8,000. A Medium unlocks $20,000. A High unlocks $50,000. A Critical unlocks $110,000. Once unlocks are determined, the pot is distributed across every valid finding using severity weights: Low at 0.5, Medium at 1, High at 5, Critical at 10.

The design rewards researchers who cover the full release surface while still letting severity drive individual payout weight.

Scale and Precedent

Contest-format engagements have become a primary income channel for elite security researchers in the space. The Aave V4 audit contest ran for six weeks with 936 participating researchers and a $365,000 reward pool. The Ethereum Foundation’s $2M Fusaka review drew over 510 researchers and surfaced four high-severity issues before mainnet activation. This XRPL engagement extends that format to a non-EVM network at a scale most protocol-level audits never reach.

Contest Scope

The contest covers seven XRPL amendments grouped into five feature areas: Batch Transactions, Permission Delegation, Permissioned DEXes, Multi-Purpose Tokens, Confidential Transfers, Sponsored Fees, and Reserves. Rather than reviewing individual amendments in isolation, the contest exposes the entire release surface to Sherlock’s full researcher network simultaneously.

About XRP Ledger

XRP Ledger is a decentralized, open-source blockchain built on a federated consensus model that settles transactions in three to five seconds with minimal energy overhead. Since launching in 2012, the network has grown to support native tokenization, a built-in decentralized exchange, and programmable finance primitives without relying on a virtual machine layer. The network is maintained by a global set of independent validators, and Ripple is one of the primary contributors to the XRPL codebase and broader ecosystem.

About Sherlock

Sherlock is a complete lifecycle security provider for Web3 protocols, connecting development-time AI analysis, private smart contract audits, competitive contests, and post-launch coverage into a single security system where each phase informs the next. The company operates a performance-ranked researcher network selected based on measured findings history, domain fit, and demonstrated skill. Past engagements include the Ethereum Foundation’s Fusaka review, Aave V4, Morpho Vaults v2, and ongoing work with Sky (formerly MakerDAO), Optimism, and Cosmos.

The XRPL contest is live at audits.sherlock.xyz/contests/1260.