The Office of Justin Sun has announced the first official recipients of the Justin Sun Prize, honoring researchers Wouter van Doorn, Quanyu Tang, and Yanyang Li for resolving six Erdős mathematical problems using human judgment paired with artificial intelligence tools.
Key Takeaways
- Wouter van Doorn, Quanyu Tang, and Yanyang Li were recognized for contributions spanning Erdős problems #369, #457, #469, #650, #1044, and #1196.
- The researchers utilized ChatGPT for proof strategy, Aristotle to repair formalization gaps, and Lean software to generate machine-verifiable proofs.
- Prize payouts are distributed according to recipient choice in either USDT on TRON (TRC-20) or USDC on Ethereum (ERC-20).
Human-AI Collaboration Resolves Decades-Old Math Challenges
Independent number theorist Wouter van Doorn, University of Science and Technology of China Ph.D. student Quanyu Tang, and Southeast University researcher Yanyang Li tackled complex math questions from the Erdős catalog, a collection of more than 1,200 problems maintained by Royal Society University Research Fellow Thomas Bloom at the University of Manchester.
For Erdős Problem #650, which determines how many integers can be matched to distinct multiples within a specified interval, the team combined ChatGPT for conceptual proof construction with Aristotle, an AI mathematical reasoning engine, to close a proof gap during formalization. In addition to Problem #650, van Doorn produced computer-checkable proofs in Lean—a software for verifying mathematical reasoning—for problems #369, #457, and #469. Meanwhile, Tang resolved problem #1044 and co-authored the solution to #1196 alongside Li.
Blockchain Settlement and Program Context
Established by TRON founder Justin Sun, the prize evaluates submissions strictly based on formal verifiability rather than academic affiliation. Winners receive rewards settled directly via digital assets—either USDT on TRON or USDC on Ethereum. TRON has processed over $13 trillion in volume since its inception.
As computational models evolve alongside crypto settlement rails, automated proof verification intersects directly with broader developments in AI technology deployment across markets and evolving stablecoin adoption standards. Sun, who previously flew on Blue Origin’s NS-34 space mission in August 2025 as the 712th person in space and served as Grenada’s Ambassador to the WTO, created the open-source initiative to channel tech-derived wealth back into scientific research.
Why It Matters
The awards mark a practical milestone in formal logic verification, showing how general generative tools like ChatGPT and specialized reasoning systems like Aristotle can bridge complex theoretical proofs into code verified by interactive theorem provers like Lean. By settling prize allocations via TRC-20 USDT and ERC-20 USDC, the program demonstrates how Web3 infrastructure can serve as an instant, borderless reward mechanism for open-source academic contributors worldwide. Watching how machine-assisted proofs scale across open math repositories will provide key insights into automated smart contract verification and cryptographic protocol security.
