How to approach contests in 2026

Hey, it’s Arsen.

In today’s menu:

• Why the old contest playbook is dead — and the 3 shifts that replaced it

• $10.8M oracle hack, $150K live contest, AI finds a Uniswap bug

• What to do before your next contest (most skip this)

Best links this week:

🏴‍☠️ YieldBlox drained for $10.8M via oracle manipulation → link

🏴‍☠️ Guardian drops $150K AMM contest — LimitBreak → link

🗞️ Uniswap V4 bug found via AI-assisted auditing → link

📙 Zellic: Inside the SVM — sBPF JIT pitfalls → link

Deep dive

Everyone says contests are dead.

Everyone says junior auditors are cooked.

Here’s the truth: no one knows.

There’s only opinions. And one fact.

The complexity bar is rising.

Forget about weird ERC20 tokens.

In 2021, people earned good money on simple bugs. Set up firms. Called themselves auditors.

In reality — intermediate at best.

When I jumped in during 2024, it was harder. Bugs weren’t trivial. But there were still plays. Dummy bugs earning $20K+.

Now? One way forward.

Prove you can find deep bugs in business logic.

But here’s what most people miss.

Contests aren’t dead.

The old approach to contests is dead.

“Jump in, learn on the go, find some bugs, get paid.”

That worked 1-2 years ago. Not anymore.

A contest in 2026 is a test.

A test for auditors hungry enough to adapt.

Less “animals” to hunt. So you change the strategy.

Here’s what actually works now:

1. Combine forces.

Why hunt alone?

Find 2-3 hungry auditors. Build a system for gathering project context fast.

That’s what eats your time — understanding, not hunting.

The mistake juniors make: rushing to submit.

Low-hanging fruit gets duplicated by 200 people. Real bugs hide deeper. You need research time after you already understand the system.

2. Use AI for understanding. Not hunting.

AI makes you dumb if you let it.

Critical thinking is the one skill you must develop.

Without it — $1 leaderboard auditor forever.

Use AI to gain context faster. Not to find the bugs.

The best AI usage comes from seniors who know what to aim it at.

If you’re junior, don’t overrely.

3. Specialize in one domain.

Early on, I jumped from contest to contest.

Cross-chain. AMM. Lending.

Nothing stuck.

Now? Pick one domain.

AMM contest dropping in 2 weeks?

Grind hard on AMM knowledge, bugs, patterns. Show up prepared. Not hoping. Prepared.

And treat every contest as compound interest.

Low payouts? You’re building the muscle.

Pattern recognition. Speed. Domain knowledge.

30 contests with small wins will crush quitting after 3.

After each one — write a 5-line retro.

What you found. What you missed. What you’d change.

That’s your personal edge database.

Stop measuring success by payout alone.

The real ROI is the skill compounding.

This newsletter gives you the direction.

But the full system — team audit setups, contest prep workflows, domain specialization paths, weekly live Q&As where I break down exactly how I approach each contest — that’s what we build inside Defendor Academy.

If you want to stop guessing and start winning, everything you need is there. [link]

See you there