Justin Sun explains why he established the "Justin Sun Award".
Original Title: Why I Established the Sun Yuchen Award
Original Author: Sun Yuchen
One
Nobel invented dynamite. Most of his life's wealth came from this thing.
It is said that in 1888, a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, titled "The Merchant of Death is Dead." He read his own obituary and made a will a few years later.
Today, no one calls him the Merchant of Death anymore.
"Nobel" has become a neutral term, like "volt" and "watt," devoid of emotion, just a unit. He gave his money to "those who have made the greatest contributions to humanity," and the money returned to human hands, and his name returned to neutrality, not through defense, but through over a century of award lists.
I tell this story because I understand him. I know where money comes from, and I know where money can go.
Two
My wealth is rooted in mathematics.
The blockchain industry as a whole is built on cryptographic constructs and security assumptions supported by long-term research: the discrete logarithm on elliptic curves is difficult to solve, hash functions are irreversible, and large numbers are hard to factor. In 1985, two mathematicians independently thought of using elliptic curves for cryptography, one at a university, one at IBM, unknown to each other. That year, no one thought this was useful. What they wrote on the blackboard later became a trillion-dollar market, becoming something unprecedented—a person can fully control their own wealth without needing anyone's permission. They themselves did not receive a single cent.
This freedom is one of mathematics' most underrated gifts to humanity. I have taken a lot from this gift. Establishing this award is, first and foremost, repaying a debt.
Three
The Nobel Prize does not have a mathematics award. This was an oversight from over a century ago, perhaps for personal reasons, perhaps simply because it was not thought of.
Later came the Fields Medal, once every four years, for those under forty; and the Abel Prize, once a year, rewarding lifetime achievement. They are both excellent, but their rhythm is the rhythm of a previous era.
The mathematics community actually had another kind of award. Erdős spent his life putting prices on problems, from twenty-five dollars to ten thousand dollars, and whoever solved them, he would write a check. Many people framed the checks on their walls and never cashed them in their entire lives. He passed away in 1996, and after that, such checks were written less and less.
And mathematics is entering a different era. AI cannot conduct experiments, but it can derive; AI struggles to build a collider for physicists, but it can try ten thousand paths for mathematicians. Today, a conjecture might go from proposal to resolution in months, or even days. An award given every four years, facing such speed, is like a bell rung once every four years, hanging in an era measured in days.
Four
So the rules of the Sun Yuchen Award are simple.
The award follows the problem, not the person. No waiting for annual meetings, no waiting for nominations, no waiting for age.
For each problem, two columns of attribution. One column records the prover, the other records the formalizer, the one who brings the proof into the machine. The two columns can be the same person, or they can be half a world apart and never know each other. Humans can, AI can, humans using AI can, and I don't care about the species in either column. The same name can appear again and again, in either column.
There is only one trigger for the money: the machine verifies the proof from the first line to the last, without a single error. Once it passes, the names in the two columns are the owners of the prize for that problem. This standard is not something I invented. Scholze put his most important theorem out there, asking people to bring it into the machine; Fermat's Last Theorem is currently being moved in line by line.
Before the machine verifies it, human proofs are not done in vain. If the mathematical community accepts it, the name goes up first, not a cent is paid, and the status bar reads: Proven, pending formalization.
The money in the solving column is only paid for problems solved after they are listed. For those already solved when listed, the prover's name is still recorded, but the money is only paid to the one who brings it into the machine. This award records what happens after its establishment; it does not retroactively pay bonuses for mathematical history.
The division of labor is clean: names belong to the mathematical community, money belongs to the machine, and the funder touches neither side. The only human judgment left is one thing: confirming that the problem written into the machine is that problem.
There is one last thing I decide: the problem list. Which problem gets listed, and at what price, is signed off by me. Erdős's checks, the prices were also written by himself, and there is no pretending otherwise here. But once the shelf is hung out, it is locked: problems are only added, never removed; money is only redeemed, never refunded; including me, no one can change it. A problem written incorrectly is paid as is, then relisted.
My taste is spent entirely on this one thing. Beyond pricing, verification, payment, and attribution, I have no vote.
Results speak for themselves.
Five
In this set of rules, what I like most is the word "wait."
When a problem is solved and accepted by the mathematical community, the money doesn't move right away. The prover's name goes up first, the formalization column stays empty, and the status bar reads: Proved, pending formalization. Whoever moves that proof into a machine, and the machine verifies it, gets their name in the empty column—and at that moment, the money's journey of ownership begins.
In other prizes, waiting is delay, is process, is a necessary evil. Here, the waiting itself is a checklist.
Erdős's checks—many people frame them on their walls and never cash them in their entire lives. Framed money looks backward: it's a memorial. Money hung on a chain looks forward: it's a summons. That empty column is equivalent to telling the whole world: there's a job here, and it has a price.
So this problem list simultaneously grows another thing: a public map, marking everything humanity has acknowledged but machines have not yet acknowledged. This map does not exist today. It exists only in fragments, scattered in a few places, never unified, and never carrying a price.
Formalizers never lack enthusiasm—what they lack is a construction blueprint with a price tag. Whoever fills that empty column gets the money. From now on, moving long proofs into machines—the enthusiasm is still theirs, the bill is mine.
Six
I also want to talk about taste. This is where this prize and the Nobel Prize truly diverge.
Nobel was an inventor. He believed all his life that a thing must be useful, must land on the ground, must be built, sold, and change people's lives. This was his taste, and it's engraved in his prize: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace—each one is a reward for the real world. For over a hundred years, this prize has rewarded those who build their buildings on the ground.
My taste is different, and I don't intend to hide where it comes from. I've read Dario Amodei's "Machines of Loving Grace," and I deeply agree with the vision he wrote in it: a country of geniuses in a data center.
I agree because I'm doing the same thing. Blockchain has been a kingdom built in the air from day one: no factories, no mines, no territory—only consensus and mathematics. I work in AI, and I'm also adding bricks to this kingdom. I believe that in this century, a considerable portion of humanity's most important architecture will be built in the air, and the foundation of an aerial kingdom can only be pure reasoning. Hardy wrote in 1940 in "A Mathematician's Apology" that he was relieved number theory would never have any practical use. Eighty years later, number theory is the foundation of my industry.
So Nobel and I chose different directions. He rewards things that land; I reward things that hang in the air but fit together perfectly. This isn't about who's right or wrong—it's two eras, two tastes. I want to pass on this idea of an aerial kingdom, through a prize, year after year.
Seven
In the fall of 2007, three people entered Peking University in the same year. One came from Shenzhen, holding a gold medal in the Mathematical Olympiad, and went straight into the School of Mathematical Sciences; one came from Guilin, first studied Earth and Space Sciences, and later transferred to mathematics; one came from Huizhou, studying history.
Nineteen years later, the first two stood on the same podium in Philadelphia. Wang Hong and Deng Yu
won the 2026 Fields Medal.
The third person was in a bedroom on a plane not long ago, scrolling through Zhihu when he came across this news. He put down his phone, and his first thought was not pride. It was: our generation, too, has reached the time when we should do something.
They contribute through proofs. I cannot prove. What I can do is make sure those who prove get paid.
Eight
Over the past years, I have made quite a few scattered charitable donations. From now on, my philanthropic focus will shift to this prize. There is only one reason: this is the thing I can do for humanity with the greatest contribution.
The prize currently focuses only on mathematics.
Nine
One more thing: why this prize is named after me.
Two reasons.
First, a prize named after a person is the least political thing in the world. Nobel, Fields, Abel, Turing, Wolf—the longest-lived prizes in mathematics and science are almost all named after a single person. Countries change, institutions rename themselves, companies go bankrupt, but once a person's name is engraved on a prize, no one can ever alter it again.
Second, it is an accounting to myself. I am thirty-six years old, and the wealth I have accumulated already exceeds what I need. If a person's wealth has no direction, it will ultimately only become inheritance disputes and auction house transaction records. I want to, while I am still clear-headed, personally point a path for this money: it came from mathematics, and it returns to mathematics.
As for my own controversies, the list is the only answer. I do not ask anyone to believe now.
The Sun Yuchen Prize can wait.
Ten
One last thing. This prize does not require anyone to trust anyone; you only need to believe in machine verification, and machines only recognize logic. The first prize pool has already been deposited into the blockchain, the address is public, and the balance is visible to the whole world. I have retained only the right to add money to it.
Every winning proof will be made public, and anyone can verify for themselves whether it holds, without needing to trust me or any committee. Every prize payout will remain on-chain, public, immutable, and verifiable even a hundred years from now. Once a proof holds, it holds forever; I hope the compensation for the prover is also something of that nature.
I am not a mathematician. I am a spectator, I pay. The rest, leave it to the proof.
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