- The Office of Justin Sun announced the first confirmed recipients of the Justin Sun Prize: independent researcher Wouter van Doorn, University of Science and Technology of China Ph.D. student Quanyu Tang, and Yanyang Li of Southeast University’s School of Mathematics in Nanjing.
- The awards recognize contributions spanning six Erdős problems, including Erdős Problem #650, solved jointly by van Doorn, Tang and Li.
- Van Doorn produced computer-checkable Lean proofs for problems #369, #457 and #469; Tang resolved #1044 and contributed to a wider team’s solution of #1196.
- Work on #650 combined human judgment with AI tools: ChatGPT helped develop the proof strategy and the Aristotle system repaired a gap during Lean formalization.
- Prizes are paid in USDT on TRON (TRC-20) or USDC on Ethereum (ERC-20), at the recipient’s choice.
The Office of Justin Sun on October 5, 2026 named the newest recipients of the Justin Sun Prize, an academic initiative established by Sun to support mathematics, formal verification and AI-assisted scientific discovery. The recipients are independent number theorist Wouter van Doorn, mathematics Ph.D. student Quanyu Tang of the University of Science and Technology of China, and mathematics researcher Yanyang Li of Southeast University’s School of Mathematics in Nanjing. According to the announcement, their contributions span six Erdős problems, and these are the program’s first confirmed awards.
Erdős problems are mathematical questions posed or popularized by the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, dealing with numbers, patterns and other mathematical structures. They are frequently simple to state but difficult to solve, and some have remained open for decades. The Erdős catalog, compiled and maintained by Thomas Bloom, a mathematician and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, contains more than 1200 problems. The prize program frames its mission around that catalog, tying clearly defined mathematical challenges to machine-verifiable proof.
What the Recipients Solved
Human Judgment and AI Verification
The work on #650 offers a concrete example of how human judgment and AI can complement each other. ChatGPT helped develop the proof strategy, while Aristotle, an AI system for mathematical reasoning, repaired a gap during Lean formalization. The researchers then simplified the argument and wrote the final proofs and exposition. “This experience taught me how public feedback can sharpen a research question, and how AI-assisted discovery can combine mathematical judgment, collaboration and rigorous verification,” Tang said in the announcement.
The program’s emphasis on formalization reflects a broader shift in mathematical research, where a result is increasingly paired with a machine-checkable certificate that independent reviewers can verify. Van Doorn’s path illustrates the prize’s stated principle that work should be judged by the strength, rigor and verifiability of the proof itself rather than the prestige of the submitter: he began researching mathematics as an undergraduate in 2010 and continued collaborating and publishing after leaving academia following his master’s degree. Tang’s research spans number theory, combinatorics and AI-assisted mathematical discovery.
Payout Mechanics and Program Details
Prizes will be paid out in either USDT on TRON (TRC-20) or USDC on Ethereum (ERC-20), based on the recipient’s choice — a detail that ties the initiative to the stablecoin infrastructure Sun founded. TRON, which Sun founded, says it has processed over $13 trillion in volume since its inception, and USDT on TRON is widely used in emerging markets for access to the global financial system. Ethereum, the network behind the ERC-20 option, traded near $2,700.54 on October 6, 2026, down about 0.95% on the day.
Information about the Justin Sun Prize, its problem catalog and recipient contributions is available through the program’s public GitHub repository, and further details are published at hejustinsun.com/prize. The program describes itself as decentralized and built on principles of openness, public benefit and open-source access, with Sun framing it as a long-term commitment to return wealth created through mathematics and technology back to mathematics itself. Whether the model scales will depend on how many additional problems in Bloom’s catalog attract verifiable solutions — and on whether formal verification becomes a standard expectation rather than a distinguishing feature of prize submissions.
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