Suggestion: Create "Squads"

[horsefacts]

Problem/opportunity

There are currently only two ways to compete on C4: as a solo individual or as a member of a permanent team.

Establishing and competing as a team requires trust, coordination, and alignment. Members typically set up a shared multisig wallet, and must agree on which contests to participate in and how to fairly allocate rewards. This can be challenging: individual members may have different degrees of trust, skill levels, availability, and preferences.

Additionally, since competing on multiple teams fragments each warden’s leaderboard score across multiple entities, wardens are incentivized either to compete as individuals, or as part of a single, long lived team. Since leaderboard scores are used as qualification criteria for private audits, mitigation reviews, and other opportunities, we can expect the impact of these incentives to increase as C4 expands its additional offerings.

These incentives mean it’s harder to work in a collaborative group than it should be. Nearly all registered C4 teams are either pairs of individuals or organized around an external entity (for example, Spearbit, Certora, Nascent, BowTiedWardens, Sherlock, Scopelift).

However, there are many potential benefits to encouraging collaboration: more and better findings, fewer duplicates to process, opportunities for learning, and reduced dilution of the overall prize pool. In my own (subjective) experience, I've found that I perform better and have more confidence in my findings when I work with another person.

Desired outcomes

• Increased small group collaboration finds more bugs, produces better reports, and reduces duplication.
• Temporary, low-stakes collaboration enables wardens to work together and eventually form more permanent teams.
• Wardens are enabled to form special purpose teams that draw on specific expertise for specific contests.
• Judging and awarding continue to attribute winnings and findings in a way that is fair to everyone.

Proposed solution

Allow groups of wardens to compete as “Squads.” Squads should function like teams, with one important difference: a squad's winnings will be divided equally, attributed to each individual warden on the leaderboard, and distributed separately (that is, just like individual findings and awards).

In the contest and judging phases, a squad would operate just like a team, submitting findings under a single shared identity. During the scoring and awarding phase, squad members would be treated as individuals. Although the same squad may compete in multiple contests, unlike teams, they should not appear as permanent entities on the leaderboard.

Since C4 would handle award distribution, the trust and coordination effort required to compete as a squad will be lower than forming a team. Since findings would count towards individual scores, wardens will be more likely to form small teams without worrying about fragmenting their scores.

Consequences

• C4 reporting and awarding tooling would need to support this new concept.
• C4 staff must be willing to take on the administrative effort of award distribution. (Hopefully not too different from individual award distribution).

[sseefried]

I love everything about this idea. I competed in one competition as a team, and it was a good experience, but I want to try competing with a range of different people as much or as little as I want.

The only extension to this idea I would suggest is that you can propose an uneven split on a per contest basis.

e.g. For Contest X and a squad of 3 members, Handle A gets 30%, Handle B gets 50% and Handle C gets 20%.

[horsefacts]

I like this! My only concern is that there would be more design complexity to consider and tooling to build with this feature. Who sets the split? Where and when? What does it look like in the UI? How will it feed into awarding tools?

Deciding who gets to choose the split seems like the hardest part, but I can imagine two steps: first anyone can propose a team and assign splits, then each proposed member must opt in to join (so they have a chance to reject the proposal if they think it's unfair).

[sseefried]

Yes, I think it would have to work this way. Either you get a unanimous agreement on the split or the squad isn't formed.

[sseefried]

I agree with you that it adds complexity to the design but it's a feature I'm almost certain people are going to want up-front.

[sseefried]

If a certain someone were to start implementing this idea would the C4 staff be interested in integrating it into their process? :-)

[adamavenir]

Possibly! I haven't had time personally to give this the thought it deserves but I would love to see what you're thinking @sseefried