On September 16, 2026, in Geneva, Switzerland, the Office of Justin Sun announced the launch of the Justin Sun Prize, a decentralized, zero-trust academic bounty mechanism tied to a public list of mathematical problems. The initiative offers a top prize of up to US$1 million for a single problem and aims to redefine scientific rewards in the AI era by combining human and machine intelligence.
The first winners were announced alongside the launch, with prizes recognizing solutions and formalized proofs across 66 mathematical problems. The $1 million top prize went to OpenAI’s research team for solving and formally proving the Existence and Smoothness of the Three-Dimensional Navier–Stokes Equations. OpenAI said the proof was generated by its internal model, with Lean formalization and verification completed by GPT-6 Astra. The Navier–Stokes problem is one of the seven Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prize Problems.
Justin Sun described the prize as an answer to himself, stating: “My wealth is rooted in mathematics. It came from mathematics, and it will return to mathematics.” The prize removes traditional nomination and credential barriers: anyone—human or AI—can win by being the first to achieve a qualifying breakthrough.
The problem list is public and append-only; once posted, problems cannot be removed. It already includes formal verification challenges such as the Poincaré Conjecture, the Riemann Hypothesis, Goldbach’s Conjecture, and problems proposed by Paul Erdős. Winners also receive a certificate and medal inscribed with “Quod probatur, solvitur,” or “Proved, then paid.”
The prize follows three principles—openness, public benefit, and open source—with proofs and verification materials published via GitHub and disbursement records stored on-chain. Payouts will be made in either USDT on TRON (TRC-20) or USDC on Ethereum (ERC-20). The announcement also highlighted that TRON has processed over $13 trillion in volume since inception and remains central to stablecoin usage in emerging markets.
