Overview

A real protein pocket, a public number to beat, and the first molecule that beats it is paid in the same minute.

The Frontier publishes one pocket a day. A pocket is a protein structure from RCSB PDB with a drug crystallised inside it, chosen from the day's Open Targets associations by a rule nobody can tune by hand. We re-dock that drug ourselves, five times at a fixed seed, and the number that comes back is the one to beat. Beat it by 0.5 kcal/mol and the escrow pays you.

Everything that decides money is pinned and published: the receptor file and its sha256, the box, the seed, the exhaustiveness, the CPU count, the filter thresholds and the versions of RDKit, Meeko and AutoDock Vina. The verifier version string is medf-verify/1.0.0+vina1.2.7+rdkit2026.09.1. Anyone can re-run any settled record and get the same number back.

A docking score is a proxy for binding, not a measurement of it, and it is gameable; the filters and the cap of 35 heavy atoms are what keep the winners inside drug-like space, and nothing here says a winning molecule is a drug.

Reading targets and submitting are free. Two endpoints are paid in USDC through x402: a dock without a bounty at 0.05 USDC, and the whole record set at 0.01 USDC.