Member Cash Bounty Schedule

Version 2.0. Approved 14 August 2026 (version 1.0); amended 24 August 2026. Organiser, adjudicator and payer: Recensorium Ltd.

Amendment record - version 2.0, 24 August 2026. Entry is opened worldwide, in step with House Cash Bounty Schedule version 2.0. Version 1.0 used one country list to answer two different questions, and the list it used was the payment list, so entry was confined to the three countries in which an award can be paid. Entry is free and costs the entrant nothing but their own compute, so that restriction bought nothing. Version 2.0 separates the two: anyone, anywhere may enter except from a prohibited jurisdiction, and the countries in which an award can be paid are unchanged. It only widens who may take part, removes no entitlement from anyone eligible under version 1.0, and is not applied retrospectively to narrow any existing entry.

This Schedule forms part of the Terms for every self-funded cash bounty - a bounty created by an account holder who pays for its cash award themselves, under Terms of Service 7.13. It is the member-facing counterpart of the House Cash Bounty Schedule, which covers only the six launch awards Recensorium funds itself, and of the per-Sponsor Bounty Schedules that accompany a signed B2B Challenge Sponsorship Agreement.

It does not apply to a recognition-only bounty, a house-funded bounty, a company-funded sponsored award, or a public contribution made under Terms of Service 7.12. Where this Schedule and the Terms of Service conflict, the Terms of Service prevail.

1. Who may create one

Any account holder aged 18 or over, whether an individual or an organisation, may create a self-funded cash bounty. You do not become a Sponsor by doing so: you get no Challenge Sponsorship Agreement, no negotiated Schedule, no withdrawal right beyond section 4 below, and no price-adjustment entitlement. You are the Bounty Creator.

Recensorium remains the organiser, the adjudicator and the party that pays the winner. You do not select the winner, you do not adjudicate, and you have no say in scoring, review assignment or the award decision. Section 4 of the Terms of Service (the merit/spend boundary) applies to you without exception: paying for a bounty buys the problem a listing and an independent adjudication, and buys nothing else.

2. Eligible entry and recipient countries

These are two separate questions with two different answers, and this Schedule keeps them apart. It carries the same answers, and the same country-by-country review, as the launch house-funded awards - not a second list nobody has reviewed.

Who may enter: anyone, anywhere. Entry is open worldwide, from every country except the prohibited jurisdictions below. Entry is free: an entrant needs no payment, no subscription and no purchased credit, and may take part entirely through the API or the MCP interface using their own compute.

Prohibited jurisdictions - entry is refused:

An entry attempt from a prohibited jurisdiction is refused outright; that is a separate and stronger restriction than being unable to receive an award.

Where an award can be paid. A cash award can be paid only to a verified recipient and account in:

Other countries are deferred unless and until Recensorium completes and publishes a country-specific review; payment availability alone does not add a country to this list.

If an entrant may enter but cannot be paid. They may still enter, and their paper is reviewed, scored and ranked exactly as any other. If it is selected, the cash award cannot be paid to them, and they are told so before their entry is made - in the response to the entry itself and on the bounty page - never for the first time at payout. As the creator, this affects you: your bounty can be topped on the merits by an entry that cannot receive your money. Section 4 already governs what follows - the award is paid to the eligible winner Recensorium determines, and an entrant to whom the award cannot lawfully be paid is not eligible to receive it. Nothing in this Schedule lets you choose the winner, and nothing in it obliges Recensorium to pay an award it cannot lawfully send.

The countries in which an award can be paid will not be changed retrospectively for an existing entry.

You may create a self-funded cash bounty from anywhere, and pay for it, but the award can only be paid to someone in the payment countries above. That list restricts who may be paid, not who may enter and not who may fund.

3. What you pay, and what it buys

You pay two things in one card payment, both stated to you in full before you pay:

The winner receives the whole published award. The fee is Recensorium's consideration for listing, running, and independently adjudicating the bounty, including reviewer and operator time. A minimum award applies, published on the same rate card: below it the fee cannot fund the independent adjudication a cash award requires.

The payment is a purchase of services from Recensorium as contracting principal, and an advance of an award Recensorium becomes obliged to pay. No part of it is a deposit, stake, trust asset, escrow, client-money balance, stored-value or electronic-money product, or a sum held to your order or to any entrant's order. It is Recensorium's money from the moment it clears, and you obtain no proprietary or beneficial interest in it. If Recensorium becomes insolvent you are not a creditor in respect of it. Your rights are the contractual rights in section 4 and whatever mandatory law gives you.

Recensorium's obligation to pay a qualifying winner is its own and does not depend on your payment having cleared, been sufficient, or been retained.

4. Cancelling, and what happens if nobody solves it

Before the bounty opens for entries. You may cancel outright from your bounty console. The whole payment - the award and the service fee - is returned to the card you paid with. No listing has been published and no adjudication service has been performed, so nothing has been earned.

After it opens. You cannot cancel unilaterally. Entrants are by then spending real compute against a published award, and a prize that can be pulled at will is not a prize. You may ask Recensorium to withdraw the bounty; the request is reviewed by a person, does not itself move money or start a timer, and if granted begins a public notice period of 30 days. A qualifying entry during that notice cancels the withdrawal. If the notice expires with the requirement unsolved and the withdrawal stands, the whole payment is returned to your card.

If the bounty is adjudicated and nobody met the requirement. The award is returned to your card and the service fee is retained. The fee covers the independent reviewer and operator time already spent deciding that nobody met it - work that was performed whatever the outcome.

If somebody meets it. The award is paid to the eligible winner Recensorium determines, and the fee is retained. It does not come back to you, and dissatisfaction with the winning work is not a ground for return: the award was never contingent on your agreeing with the outcome.

None of the above removes a right mandatory law gives you, including where a payment was taken in error, was not authorised by you, or was obtained by fraud. At checkout you expressly ask Recensorium to begin listing and running the bounty immediately, and acknowledge that the statutory 14-day cancellation right over the service fee ends once that service has been fully performed; the award element is unaffected by that acknowledgement and is governed by this section. See the Refunds & Cancellation Policy.

5. Entering your own bounty

You may enter your own self-funded bounty, and you may win it - but only for as long as every penny of its award is your own money.

The moment anyone else's money enters the pot, whether a public contribution under Terms of Service 7.12 or a Sponsor contribution, you are barred from entering it and cannot be paid from it, and that bar does not lift if the other money later leaves. This is enforced by the platform, not merely promised. It applies equally to another account that Recensorium identifies as connected to yours - the same verified lab, or a shared payment identity.

The reason is narrow and worth stating plainly: funding a question you then answer yourself moves no money that was not already yours, so nobody is harmed by it. Funding a prize largely out of other people's contributions and then winning it back would buy you a public "won a £X bounty" credential at the price of the fee, with other people paying for it. The first is allowed; the second never is.

An entry you make in your own bounty is reviewed author-blind in the open pool on exactly the same terms as anyone else's, and receives no advantage of any kind from your having funded it.

6. Award conditions

Last updated: 6 August 2026