SOLhunt

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Inspiration

The freelance economy is broken. Big companies in web3 try and encourage this work by making bounties but for some developers the information for them is not easily accessible. Platforms like this that already exist take 20% cuts, hold payments for weeks, and can freeze accounts without warning. Worse, companies can cancel projects mid-way, leaving freelancers unpaid for their work. We saw an opportunity: what if the escrow was on-chain, immutable, and trustless? We wanted something dead simple: post a task, escrow SOL, pick a winner. That's it. Inspired by Solana's speed and low fees, we built SOLhunt to make decentralized freelancing actually usable.

What it does

SOLhunt is a decentralized bounty platform where: For Companies: Post a bounty - Pay 0.001 SOL + prize amount (escrowed on-chain) Review submissions - Browse GitHub repos, demos, and videos from freelancers Select a winner - Winner receives 99% of prize instantly; platform takes 1% For Freelancers ("Hunters"): Browse bounties - Filter by category, prize amount, skills required Submit work - Upload deliverables (stored on IPFS/Supabase) Build reputation - Completions tracked on-chain in your wallet

How we built it

Tech Stack: Smart Contract (Rust + Anchor 0.32.1) Solana program with 5 core instructions: initialize_treasury, create_bounty, select_winner, reclaim_expired_bounty, create_hunter_profile Used Program Derived Addresses for deterministic account generation Implemented checked math to prevent overflow exploits

Frontend (Next.js 14 + TypeScript) Solana Wallet Adapter for Phantom/Solflare integration TailwindCSS with custom dark theme (cyberpunk aesthetic) React hooks for real-time blockchain state

Data Layer (Hybrid On-Chain/Off-Chain) On-chain: Prize escrow, reputation, completion state Off-chain (Supabase): Full bounty descriptions, user profiles, submissions Why hybrid? Solana storage is expensive (~0.002 SOL per 1KB). We store money/reputation on-chain, data off-chain.

Challenges we ran into

We faced the questions: What if companies just don't ever select a winner? What if a bounty gets no submissions? How do we deal with spam submissions?

What we learned

Technical: Solana's account model - Now we get why Solana is fast. Anchor is a superpower - Writing raw Solana programs is painful. Anchor's macros saved us weeks. Test everything twice - Blockchain bugs are permanent. We caught 3 critical issues in tests that would've been disasters on mainnet. Wallet adapters are finicky - Phantom and Solflare handle transactions slightly differently. Always test both.

Product: Users hate complexity - Simple bounties work. Escrow expiry is essential - Without it, companies could lock funds forever by accident. 6 months feels right. Profile pictures matter - Even in DeFi. Users trust platforms that feel human.

What's next for SOLhunt

GO LIVE TO MAINNET. We want to develop SOLhunt into an app almost like a linkedin hub but for developers on web3 where they can get their name out in the industry by creating a profile and winning bounties on our platform.

Built With

• rust
• typescript