RuCTFE 2020 partnership proposal

Partnerships Accepted Proposals
#1

About us

We are HackerDom team, a student association.

We love cybersecurity and organizing different events related to computer security. We also love sharing our experience with the younger generation by making free live-lectures and video-courses. Tens of thousands of people have already watched our online security course on ulearn.me and YouTube.

We organize contests driven by the classic CTF rules. These are the team contests that require extensive skills in different fields of computer science, such as programming, system administration, reverse engineering, networks, protocols, cryptography, steganography and exploits writing. But time is always limited, so every team should succeed not only in solving tasks but also in organizing a well-coordinated joint work without being distracted by any obstacles. (More about it on wikipedia).

Over the past decade, we have held about 30 competitions and trained thousand students. The biggest events that we organize regularly:

  • RuCTF — offline attack-defence CTF competition and conference. In 2019, 28 teams entered the finals - RuCTF Finals (ctftime.org/event/734). According to CTFTime in 2019, 11 of those teams were amongst the hundred top teams in the world (ctftime.org/stats/2019). (Photo report).
  • RuCTFE — an annual international online competition under the rules of attack and defence and conference, which we have been holding for ten years. At the qualifying stage of RuCTFE 2019, 188 out of 366 registered teams entered the leaderboard with positive result.
  • QCTF — offline task-based CTF. It takes place in a lot of different locations at the same time. (2018 competitions’ photo report).

From our RuCTFE experience:

As an example, we have developed following competitions on our own:

This season we are going to conduct RuCTFE 2020 online on December 26th. It will be an international contest in the form of attack-defense CTF. Every team will receive a server with a pre-installed set of vulnerable services. The team should find and patch it, steal confidential information from other teams and at the same time defend the server from others. The automatic verification system will judge all teams and rate their performance

Last year, 384 teams from different countries were registered. By the end of a contest, 187 of them got a positive result. More than a thousand people participated.

We target students, undergraduates and postgraduates of technical universities, representatives from various IT companies and enthusiasts who are interested in information security.

Partnership goals

We invite Free TON to become one of the sponsors of the RuCTFE 2020 which will be held in December 2020.

In return, we offer:

  1. To promote Free TON Crystal on the international market. We will show Free TON as a reliable tool for handling transactions and will bring new users to the system.
  2. To involve talented developers. Our players are competent in solving various complex computer security problems. This could expand the professional community to work on different Free TON projects.
  3. To increase Free TON brand awareness. In addition to all awards, we can promote Free TON in RuCTFE social media. We could tell about Free TON BugBounty program so that our players could pentest smart contacts and other components of the Free TON infrastructure or test the code. In addition to this, we could explain how it is possible to contribute to open source development and other Free TON contests.

Valuable prizes can only increase interest and involve more people to participate in Free TON projects.

Token Request

The projected budget is 500,000 Free TON Crystal for the entire project:

  • 50% [250,000 Free TON Crystal] — the prize fund — as a reward for participants of RuCTFE competition.
  • 30% [150,000 Free TON Crystal] — for management and development team’ award. Funds will be distributed by a joint decision of the team lead, dev-team, and org-team director. This sum includes covering current organizational expenses of RuCTFE contest - 20% [100,000 Free TON Crystal] and organizational expenses of the conference - 10% [50,000 Free TON Crystal].
  • 5% [25,000 Free TON Crystal] — for conference speakers.
  • 15% [75,000 Free TON Crystal] — will be directed to the HackerDom fund in case of successfully organized competition as an advance for future events (funds will be distributed by the decision of the event director).

Free TON token securing method

We suggest creating a multisig wallet with 7 public keys. To make an outgoing transaction, at least 5 signatures are required. RuCTFE team will own 3 keys, meanwhile, the other 4 keys will belong to the representative members of Free TON community.

Thus, to sign an outgoing transaction, we will have to sign it with our 3 keys and get the support of at least 2 members of Free TON community. However, it is not possible to complete a transaction if only one side will sign it.

That way, before the transaction, multiple members of the Free TON community will be able to independently verify that the RuCTFE representatives have complied with their obligations during the competition.

The reward for RuCTFE organization and development team

In 2019, RuCTFE organization and development processes were divided between 22 people (ructfe.org/2019/devteam). Making a high-quality competition requires highly skilled workers. We believe that our managers and developers are true professionals who deserve a good reward in order to successfully arrange a great event.

We have already had the experience of developing large events. As an example, we have developed on our own: HITB PRO CTF Abu Dhabi, UAE had $100,000 prize Fund (1st Place - $50,000; 2nd Place - $30,000; 3rd Place - $20,000).

Participants’ rewarding

Every highly active team deserves a reward. The reward will be sent to the team’s captain. Token distribution between team members will be left to the captain. Each team must provide a wallet address within 90 days from the end of the competition in order to receive the prize. Otherwise, the prize will be transferred to the HackerDom fund to finance the later organizational tasks.

If any team members are US citizens and/or represent a team from any American organization (university, etc) we will not be able to reward this team under the Free TON rules. By the organizers’ decision, this team’s award will be transferred to the HackerdDom fund to finance future events.

The RuCTFE jury, by its’ decision, may deprive one or several participating teams of their prize, a part or entirely, before, during or after competition, in case of discovered cheating, irregularities or unsportsmanlike behaviour. In such a case, the prize will be distributed among other teams or transferred to the HackerDom fund by the decision of the organizers.

We plan to allocate 120 winning places:

Here's Free TON Crystal distribution plan among winning places

1 place - 64000
2 place - 32000
3 place - 16000
4 place - 8000
5 place - 7000
6 place - 6000
7 place - 5000
8 place - 4000
9 place - 3000
10 place - 2000
11 place - 1950
12 place - 1900
13 place - 1850
14 place - 1800
15 place - 1750
16 place - 1700
17 place - 1650
18 place - 1600
19 place - 1550
20 place - 1500
21 place - 1450
22 place - 1400
23 place - 1350
24 place - 1300
25 place - 1250
26 place - 1200
27 place - 1150
28 place - 1100
29 place - 1050
30 place - 1000
31 place - 990
32 place - 980
33 place - 970
34 place - 960
35 place - 950
36 place - 940
37 place - 930
38 place - 920
39 place - 910
40 place - 900
41 place - 890
42 place - 880
43 place - 870
44 place - 860
45 place - 850
46 place - 840
47 place - 830
48 place - 820
49 place - 810
50 place - 800
51 place - 790
52 place - 780
53 place - 770
54 place - 760
55 place - 750
56 place - 740
57 place - 730
58 place - 720
59 place - 710
60 place - 700
61 place - 690
62 place - 680
63 place - 670
64 place - 660
65 place - 650
66 place - 640
67 place - 630
68 place - 620
69 place - 610
70 place - 600
71 place - 590
72 place - 580
73 place - 570
74 place - 560
75 place - 550
76 place - 540
77 place - 530
78 place - 520
79 place - 510
80 place - 500
81 place - 490
82 place - 480
83 place - 470
84 place - 460
85 place - 450
86 place - 440
87 place - 430
88 place - 420
89 place - 410
90 place - 400
91 place - 390
92 place - 380
93 place - 370
94 place - 360
95 place - 350
96 place - 340
97 place - 330
98 place - 320
99 place - 310
100 place - 300
101 place - 290
102 place - 280
103 place - 270
104 place - 260
105 place - 250
106 place - 240
107 place - 230
108 place - 220
109 place - 210
110 place - 200
111 place - 190
112 place - 180
113 place - 170
114 place - 160
115 place - 150
116 place - 140
117 place - 130
118 place - 120
119 place - 110
120 place - 100

…

300 place - 100

243,550 Free TON Crystal total.

The remaining [250,000 - 243,550] = 12,450 Free TON Crystal is planned to be spent on Firstblood, Bugbounty or [by the jury’ decision] any other special bonuses achieved by the playing teams. Every team can only take one place.

Based on previous years’ experience, teams with places below 120 did not differ very substantially (ructfe.org/2019/results). As a result, all teams that were able to log in to the play system and participated may, by the jury decision, be granted with a “Welcome bonus” of 100 Free TON Crystal. (Assuming that an average team consists of 7 people — 14.2 Crystal per person). By decision of the RuCTFE director and/or jury team, the prize funds can be reallocated.

In case of force majeure, such as a competition delaying, the decision on further actions with Free TON Crystal should be held as a Free TON forum discussion and/or by voting of the jury Free TON Governance.

Conference

RuCTFE includes not only a CTF competition but also a conference. About 500 people attended our offline RuCTFE conference in 2019,

Unfortunately, we had to cancel RuCTF 2020 in April due to Covid19 restrictions, but we still plan to host RuCTFE conference at the end of 2020 - the beginning of 2021 (it is essential to highlight that the dates of the conference will not match up with the dates of the CTF competition).

We’re going to publish records of speakers’ presentations on YouTube. We also may invite a small group of people to participate in event, if it will not conflict with the Covid19 regulations.

We will gladly distribute 25,000 Free TON Crystal among conference speakers as a reward. We intend to split the reward evenly between all speakers. The amount of the award will be defined by the number of participating speakers. That will be 1,500 Free TON Crystals for each participant, assuming that there will be 16 speakers (12–20 speakers).

The decision about the distribution of the award in case of unforeseen circumstances (as, for example, cancellation or postponement of the conference) will be proposed to the Free TON community. The discussion will be held on the Free TON forum including, if necessary, voting of the jury Free TON Governance.

As we expect, some speakers may become interested in the Free TON projects and will join to check them out, make pentests or support the community. There’s also a chance some may mention Free TON in the future talks.

KYP procedure

Anyone can trace and make sure that the funds will be credited to the wallet of the RuCTFE organizing team. Additional evidence can be provided upon the request of members of the Free TON community

We will measure quality and quantity of the work done by the following key points:

Part 1

SEE UPDATED INFO BELOW

Stage Dates How much For what KPI decription
RuCTFE Step 1 Up front (26 December 2020) 5,000 Free TON Crystal Organizational costs (servers, cloud hosting, etc) - We have successfully conducted the competition.
- We were able to get over 100 active teams with results above zero points. This means that several hundred players learned about the Free TON system to get their reward. In addition to this, each team that had received the “Welcome bonus” would be involved in the Crystal distribution process. Some playing teams may include professional CTF players.
- We have mentioned the Free TON project in our social media. The exact number of posts and information in them should be discussed with our PR department.
RuCTFE Step 2 27 December 2020 95,000 Free TON Crystal The reward for successful contest hosting RuCTFE organization team received its’ reward (minus a deduction toward contest’ organization)
RuCTFE Step 3 28 December 2020 - 1 April 2021 250,000 Free TON Crystal CTF players’ reward All playing teams have received their rewards. The rewarding process of all participants was completed by April 1, 2021

Total 350,000 Free TON Crystal

Part 2

Stage Dates How much For what KPI decription
Conference Step 1 Up front (December 2020 – January 2021) 10,000 Free TON Crystal Rental of video recording equipment and place, speakers’ travel expanses, their accommodation and meals We have held the conference in offline form. The presentations of speakers’ were recorded
Conference Step 2 January 2021, during the first week after the conference 25,000 Free TON Crystal 1,500 Crystals for each participant All speakers have received their reward in form of Free TON Crystal
Conference Step 3 January – February 2021 5,000 Free TON Crystal Video editing of speakers’ talks, post-production, simultaneous interpretation into English We have edited recordings and then uploaded them on our YouTube channel
Conference Step 4 January – February 2021 35,000 Free TON Crystal A reward for achieving a successful conference RuCTFE organization team has received its’ reward (minus organizational expenses)

Total 75,000 Free TON Crystal

Part 3

Dates How much For what KPI decription
January – February 2021 75,000 Free TON Crystal - RuCTF 2021
- QCTF Starter 2021
- QCTF School 2021
- RuCTFE 2021 or other public events organized by the HackerDom team		 In case of successful completion of KPI part 1 and 2, we suggest continuing our cooperation with Free TON community and organizing the second round of token distribution — a request on down payment 15% for financing upcoming events organized by HackerDom team

We are ready to provide additional reports by the end of each step upon the request of members of the Free TON community.

Regardless of your further decision about our project, we will be glad to see the developers and members of the Free TON community as RuCTFE participants.

We invite members of Free TON community to make presentations about Free TON or any other technical topic on the conference RuCTFE 2020 or on other future conferences.

Participants of our events are always open to learn something new, so they will be glad to hear talks from members of the Free TON community.

Best regards,

RuCTFE team.

Our wallet

0:bd9e0f00061e6ffc95c2107ce381d5050b692be2f95b1c83af72300756020d5d

RuCTFE media

RuCTFE.org

github.com/hackerdom

Telegram

VK

Facebook

Twitter

7 Likes
#2

I know you guys are really good and your concept is okay too, but this is just asking for way too many tokens. This kind of thing should be handled by the now-forming Free TON Academy sub-governance, but they will have nowhere near that kind of budget in total, let alone for 1 project. At least at the start. You would really need to come down on the ask or maybe start with something more conservative.

Additionally, there is no Free TON code related implementation here. If the Free TON code would be involved I would be more supportive, but even then we are just selling 500K on the market. That’s not a good idea. The usual price of sponsorship is nowhere near these numbers. I ran an events company for over a decade. I know.

I’m guessing the first out-of-the-box budget Free TON Academy sub-governance will propose to test its effectiveness will be on an order of +/- 100K when the proposal is made, and that’s the TOTAL budget. So perhaps it’s worth keeping that in mind. In addition, it needs to be a long term partnership goal where tokens are vested over a year. Something like that.

Let’s see if this can be improved based on this info. Otherwise, thank you for the offer!

9 Likes
#3

Thank you for such a valuable point!

We have already joined Free TON Academy. Also, we are looking forward to hearing comments from other community members. It will help us to better understand the situation.

We are going to reorganize our budget to make it more likely to be accepted.

3 Likes
#4

After taking into account the current situation in the Free TON Community and getting some comments from its members, we decided to change our token request in order to come to an agreement from both sides. So here goes our new financial plan.

Your feedback is welcome!

Part 1

Stage Dates How much For what KPI description
RuCTFE Step 1 Up front (26 December 2020) 5,000 Free TON Crystal Organizational costs (servers, cloud hosting, etc) - We have successfully conducted the competition.
- We were able to get over 100 active teams with results above zero points. This means that several hundred players learned about the Free TON system to get their reward. In addition to this, each team that had received the “Welcome bonus” would be involved in the Crystal distribution process. Some playing teams may include professional CTF players.
- We have mentioned the Free TON project in our social media. The exact number of posts and information in them should be discussed with our PR department.
RuCTFE Step 2 27 December 2020 15,000 Free TON Crystal The reward for successful contest hosting RuCTFE organization team received its reward (minus a deduction toward contest’ organization)
RuCTFE Step 3 28 December 2020 – 1 April 2021 50,000 Free TON Crystal CTF players’ reward All playing teams have received their rewards. The rewarding process of all participants was completed by April 1, 2021

Total 70,000 Free TON Crystal

Part 2

Stage Dates How much For what KPI description
Conference Step 1 Up front (December 2020 – January 2021) 5,000 Free TON Crystal Rental of video recording equipment and place, speakers’ travel expanses, their accommodation and meals We have held the conference in offline form. The presentations of speakers were recorded
Conference Step 2 January 2021, during the first week after the conference 10,000 Free TON Crystal 500 Crystals for each participant All speakers have received their reward in form of Free TON Crystal
Conference Step 3 January – February 2021 5,000 Free TON Crystal Video editing of speakers’ talks, post-production, simultaneous interpretation into English We have edited recordings and then uploaded them on our YouTube channel
Conference Step 4 January – February 2021 10,000 Free TON Crystal A reward for achieving a successful conference RuCTFE organization team has received its reward (minus organizational expenses)

Total 30,000 Free TON Crystal

Competition rewards

Here's new Free TON Crystal distribution plan among winning places

1 place - 8192
2 place - 4096
3 place - 2048
4 place - 1024
5 place - 950
6 place - 900
7 place - 850
8 place - 800
9 place - 750
10 place - 740
11 place - 730
12 place - 720
13 place - 710
14 place - 700
15 place - 690
16 place - 680
17 place - 670
18 place - 660
19 place - 650
20 place - 640
21 place - 630
22 place - 620
23 place - 610
24 place - 600
25 place - 590
26 place - 580
27 place - 570
28 place - 560
29 place - 550
30 place - 540
31 place - 530
32 place - 520
33 place - 510
34 place - 500
35 place - 490
36 place - 480
37 place - 470
38 place - 460
39 place - 450
40 place - 440
41 place - 430
42 place - 420
43 place - 410
44 place - 400
45 place - 390
46 place - 380
47 place - 370
48 place - 360
49 place - 350
50 place - 340
51 place - 330
52 place - 320
53 place - 310
54 place - 300
55 place - 290
56 place - 280
57 place - 270
58 place - 260
59 place - 250
60 place - 240
61 place - 230
62 place - 220
63 place - 210
64 place - 200
65 place - 190
66 place - 180
67 place - 170
68 place - 160
69 place - 150
70 place - 140
71 place - 130
72 place - 120
73 place - 110
74 place - 100
75 place - 90
76 place - 80
77 place - 70
78 place - 60
79 place - 50
80 place - 40
81 place - 30
82 place - 20
83 place - 10
…
300 place - 10

The remaining [50,000 - 49,530] = 470 Free TON Crystal is planned to be spent on Firstblood, Bugbounty or [by the jury’ decision] any other special bonuses achieved by the playing teams. Every team can only take one place.

5 Likes
#5

MUUUUUUUUUCH better! Looks very relevant now. I suggest accepting. What do the rest of you think? Please leave comments, dear community!

2 Likes
#6

Now the sum is more real, because 500k looked like space

#7

Will we have time to cooperate ? (voting, approval, transfer. + working with ads may take several days.) I see the risk of not being on time.

Total Of 500,000 Crystals. Right?
What the FreeTON project gets

  1. To promote Free TON Crystal on the international market .
    Approximately how many participants will be present and follow RuCTFE 2020 ?
  2. To involve talented developers.
    This is interesting, please describe in more detail how it will be presented to developers.
  3. To increase Free TON brand awareness.
    Your social networks don’t have many users. Or are there other media channels?
    YouTube - 1,940 subscribers
    VK - 4530 participants
    Telegram - 580 participants
    Twitter - 400 readers
1 Like
#9

Hi!

First, thanks for your comment!

Yes, we have made sure to provide enough time for both sides to cooperate, but even if it takes a few more days than we expected — it will be ok for us. As well, we have reduced our initial request down to the 100k Free TON Crystals.

We’re aiming for 16–20 conference speakers, and more than 120 teams to participate in competition (average team usually consists of 7 people). Furthermore, some of our community members will join the conference in person. We will record the conference, upload it on YouTube, and engage speakers to participate in conversation in the comments sections of videos.

Our target audience consists of people, who are interested in information security either professionally or as a hobby. We’ve got veterans of CTF, pentesters and reverse engineers. We believe that this mix of enthusiasts should provide positive feedback on the Free TON projects.

It is important to consider, that some CTF players do not use any social media daily, but they still monitor all the news. We’re using our Telegram channel for reaching HackerDom’s community, as you could see, an average post gets viewed more than a one thousand times.

2 Likes
#10

Thank you for the detailed answer and clarification.
I will support You once again. :+1:

1 Like
#11

I really like this reworked proposal. You can count on my vote.

1 Like
#12

Alright, we have some new updates!
We have opened RuCTFE registration for teams and posted our wallet address to confirm the KYP procedure.
You can check it out here. Moreover, you are welcome to join in!

1 Like
#13

hello guys!

Could you please tell a little bit more about the CTF format itself? How are you going to run it or what do these competitions consist of? How can a person get any new knowledge while playing this format? What can a new member do in order to blend in?

(So many questions, as you can see)

I just want you to explain the basis and know, whether I can participate in this event.

3 Likes
#14

Thank you for your question!

CTF are the team contests that help develop skills in different fields of computer science, such as programming, system administration, reverse engineering, networks, protocols, cryptography, steganography and exploits writing.
The contest takes place on the cloud platform. Every team gets a virtual machine, which is connected by the network to other virtual machines. During the competition, the organizers regularly store private information unique to each team — flags — into services. The goal of each team is to find vulnerabilities, fix them in their services, exploit them against the services of other teams to access their flags and send them to the verification system.

Don’t worry, you are allowed to use the Internet to look for the information you need. This is also a part of the contest — a good player should know how to gain knowledge.

While playing, the participants get a strong rush of adrenaline, which affects their memory and speed abilities. That really helps to learn new information faster. This is why CTF games is a perfect event to train yourself or your team.

CTF community warmly welcomes new members, and highly experienced players are usually ready to answer any of your questions. Furthermore, the majority of contests has write-ups, where you can get a problem solution.

1 Like
#15

Hey, that is a really great idea! In post-Soviet countries it is a problem nowdays to find any quality learning, and you just suggest some technical and vocational education and training that will draw attention to the whole IT community. This will surely bring some new members to the Free TON project, so I totaly support you.

What about an AMA session? It would be cool to know you better

1 Like
#16

Thanks for your support!
AMA is coming soon, don’t miss the new post!

1 Like
#17

HackerDom AMA (ask me anything) session!

image
image1280Ă—720 2.66 KB

Recently, RuCTFE team has offered partnership to the Free TON community. This Wednesday, 30.12, you will have an opportunity to ask any questions to the organizers. Just visit our AMA!

  • RuCTFE is an international contest in the form of attack-defense CTF. This season it will be conducted online on December 26th.
  • RuCTFE team always prepares a unique set of tasks for playing teams. This season the competition will take the players far away to the beautiful land of East with some magic carpets, mysterious caves and treasure chests.
  • Every year, HackerDom holds an open information-security conference in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
  • Many international top-teams are taking place in HackerDom contests for several years already.

You can ask your questions online on YouTube or Zoom platforms or leave them with a hashtag #HackerDomAMA in the chat, if you can’t join us. If you would like to join the Zoom meeting, please text Roman D.
The meeting will be held in Russian, but you still can leave your questions, and we will try to answer them in English.

We are looking to hear from you!

3 Likes
#18

I saw Free TON mentioned in RuCTFE this year, so I came here with a question. Do you have an English localization or have you only made the tasks in Russian? Just wondering, if I may join the contest without any knowledge of Russian?

1 Like
#19

Hey, that is a great question!
The thing is, you don’t really need any language skills to participate. In the beginning, you will be given a few hints but there will be no strict instructions. Your task is to discover the game all by yourself :wink:
So don’t worry, the official language of the competition is English.

1 Like
#20

Analytical report Hackerdom
This is our partnership analytical report prepared for the “Analytical reports about partners” contest.

Disclaimer:
Present analytic report is completely based on the data available in the open sources. Due to ethical reasons, personal contact details are partially hidden. The report structures all the publically available information and flags potential interdependancies and inconsistencies. Present report should not be regarded as a verdict or proof of any kind. It is an initial open source intelligence: not all the information gathered or conclusions made can be regarded as 100% legit.

ENG:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jxrp2rkx2yUb29tN3DwW6sORSaFblk1o/view?usp=sharing

RUS:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hKHD9yElJAO9PNpnYG4p207pddmueMRm/view?usp=sharing

#Analyticalreports
#Hackerdom

1 Like
Contest: DeAnalytics Token Distribution Program
#21

Hey guys!
Seems like we are moving the AMA date forward. Sorry about that.
But for now, we have some good news: we’ve released the conference trailer and you can watch it on our YouTube channel. We will be looking forward to seeing your questions to the speakers :wink:

The HackerDom team wishes you a Happy New Year!

1 Like