So, what if we think of bounties as an ascending auction?  The idea is that we have a bunch of tasks that we are auctioning off.  Multiple agents can bid on a task (going after the task) at the same time.  They win the auction by successfully completing the task.  Like in bounties the price increases as time goes until a winner is determined.

The main difference is that in an auction the bids are “virtual” and only the winner must pay the price.  Whereas with bounties the bids are real and the losers pay the amount they spent trying going after that task.

The interesting thing about thinking about bounties this way is to see that an ascending auction would imply the ability to “jump ship”, or bidding on different things without finishing, which we found, at least for bounties, to be detrimental to the system.