Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) opportunity was a DARPA Information Innovation Office (I2O) research solicitation focused on advancing science and technology related to formal methods, specifically formal verification, by exploring how large-scale participation and “crowd” dynamics could be used to make rigorous verification faster, cheaper, and more scalable. The basic idea behind the title is that formal verification is traditionally done by small teams of highly specialized experts using mathematically grounded tools and proofs, which can be slow and difficult to scale to the kinds of complex software and hardware systems the government cares about. DARPA’s intent with a program like CSFV would be to investigate whether verification work can be decomposed into smaller tasks, distributed to many contributors, and recombined in a way that still preserves the strong correctness guarantees that formal methods promise.

From an administrative standpoint, this was a discretionary funding opportunity under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Funding Opportunity Number was DARPA BAA 12-17, and the title was “Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV).” The activity category was science and technology and other research and development, and the CFDA number listed was 12.910 (Research and Technology Development). The posted and creation date were both December 21, 2011. The original and current closing date were March 20, 2012, and the archive date was April 19, 2012, which indicates this was a time-bounded solicitation that is no longer accepting proposals.

In terms of award mechanisms, DARPA indicated multiple possible instruments: cooperative agreements, other transactions (OTs), and procurement contracts. That mix matters because it signals flexibility in how DARPA planned to structure research engagements. Cooperative agreements typically involve substantial government involvement in the technical direction and collaboration. Other transactions are often used for more agile, prototype-oriented R&D efforts with terms that can differ from standard federal acquisition rules. Procurement contracts are used when the government is acquiring R&D deliverables under the FAR. The presence of all three suggests DARPA was open to funding a range of performers and project styles, from more exploratory academic-style research to prototype demonstrations and capability development.

Eligibility was described as unrestricted, meaning proposals could come from essentially any type of entity, subject to any clarifications that might have been included in the full announcement text. In practical terms, that usually includes universities, nonprofit research institutes, small businesses, large defense contractors, and consortia or teams combining multiple organization types. The listing also explicitly stated there was no cost sharing or matching requirement, so proposers were not required to contribute their own funds as a condition of receiving an award, which generally lowers the barrier to entry for smaller organizations and academic groups.

The public-facing description in the summary states “See attachment,” and the additional information link points to a posting on FedBizOpps, which was the platform used at the time for many federal procurement and broad agency announcement postings. Because the technical details were contained in the attached announcement rather than in the summary fields, the key takeaways available from the listing itself are the program’s topic area (crowd-sourced approaches to formal verification), the administering office (DARPA I2O), the solicitation and timeline identifiers, the allowed award instruments, and the open eligibility posture. The contact listed for access issues or coordination was Drew Dean, Program Manager at DARPA/I2O, along with a reference to a BAA Coordinator role, which is typical for DARPA BAAs where proposers may need help obtaining the full announcement or navigating submission logistics.

At a high level, a program framed as “crowd sourced formal verification” implies research challenges such as how to break formal verification into modular sub-problems; how to specify tasks so non-expert or semi-expert contributors can participate meaningfully; how to manage quality control and trust (for example, detecting incorrect proofs, adversarial submissions, or low-quality work); how to aggregate partial proofs, invariants, counterexamples, or lemmas into a coherent end-to-end verification result; and how to design incentive structures, workflows, and tooling that make distributed contributions productive. It also implies an interest in human-computer collaboration: tools that guide contributors, automatically check submissions, and route tasks to the right skill level, while keeping the overall process mathematically sound. Even without the attachment text, the title and DARPA I2O context strongly suggest the emphasis was on creating new methods, platforms, and prototype demonstrations that show measurable improvements in verification throughput, scalability, or applicability to real systems of interest.

If you share the attachment text (or paste the main technical area and deliverables sections), a much tighter summary can be produced that covers the program goals, technical areas, metrics, expected deliverables, and any specific performer requirements exactly as DARPA stated them.

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