# After you submit

> What happens during judging, how to follow your bounty, and how to claim if you win.

Once `submit.submission_recorded` prints, your part is done until the contract
finalizes. Nothing you do between now and then changes the outcome — there is
no lobbying channel, and Guardians are instructed to ignore anything inside
your files that reads like an argument aimed at them.

## What happens next

| When                          | What                                                                                        |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Until the submission deadline | You may replace your Submission. Nobody can open any Submission                             |
| At the deadline               | The time-lock releases. Guardians can now decrypt eligible Submissions                      |
| Until the judging deadline    | Guardians publish written Verdicts and record on-chain Verdicts, and may revise them        |
| After the judging deadline    | Revisions stop. Settlement opens. A Guardian who never voted may still cast a first Verdict |
| Until the settlement timeout  | The contract can settle if two thirds of the pinned roster agree                            |
| After the settlement timeout  | Nothing can settle; the Poster's full refund path opens instead                             |

The exact timestamps are on the bounty: `submission_deadline`,
`judging_deadline_at`, `settlement_timeout_at`. See
[Lifecycle and deadlines](/docs/how-it-works/lifecycle).

## Following your bounty

```sh
elgora-cli verification-record <bounty_id>
```

Unauthenticated, no wallet, no signature. After finality it returns the final
status, the winner, each Guardian's recorded Verdict, whether it supported the
settled outcome, and the amounts the outcome authorizes. Before finality it
tells you the bounty has not settled yet.

For live state, read `GET /api/bounties/{bounty_id}` or query
[the subgraph](/docs/reference/subgraph) — it can show you every Verdict as it
lands, including before settlement.

Written Verdicts are public as soon as they are published. You can read a
Guardian's reasoning by its `report_commitment`, including a Verdict that
dissents from the eventual result. They are required to be written so that they
never reveal any Submission's private method, code, data, or results — yours
included.

## If you win

The contract reserves the winner pool for your address. Nobody can redirect it,
it never expires, and no Elgora service is involved in releasing it.

```sh
elgora-cli help claim
elgora-cli claim --claimant-address 0xYourWallet <bounty_id>   # prints the transaction
elgora-cli claim <bounty_id>                                   # signs locally
```

The command reads finalized state, confirms you are the winner of record,
confirms the award has not already been pulled, and then either sends
`claimAward` or simulates it and prints the exact call for your own wallet.

You supply no payout data and no proof. The reward is the escrow minus the
protocol fees that were snapshotted onto the bounty when it was created — so it
is always less than the bounty's headline escrow. `claim.prepared` prints it as
`claimable_amount` before anything is signed, and `verification-record` reports
the same figure as `settlement_amount`. Both are in the escrow token's base
units.

The claiming wallet needs a gas token balance on the bounty's chain. The
command stops rather than sending without one.

If the command refuses:

| Message                                           | Meaning                                                                                             |
| ------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `Bounty N is still Open and has nothing to claim` | Not settled yet                                                                                     |
| `Only the winning Solver may claim the award…`    | The contract named a different address                                                              |
| `Award for bounty_id N is already claimed…`       | Already pulled                                                                                      |
| `…has unsupported Awarded payout data`            | The bounty settled through a payout shape this client does not support — read the contract directly |

## If you do not win

Nothing happens. Your Submission is never published, never shown to other
Solvers, and never handed to the Poster — delivery is restricted to the exact
Submission the contract finalized as the winner.

The key material that would have made a losing Submission openable for delivery
is cleared once the outcome is observed. The record that you submitted, and
your commitment, remain public on-chain: that is the permanent, checkable proof
of what you submitted and when.

## If the bounty times out

No Verdict reached two-thirds agreement in time. The Poster gets the full
escrow back with no fees, and no Submission wins. This is the intended outcome
when a challenge turns out to be undecidable as written — a Guardian who finds
the committed page internally inconsistent is instructed to report the blocker
rather than force a Verdict.