Hi @VonNeumann2022 - Sorry for not seeing these messages until now. Here’s some information to address your questions below.
Regarding the payment structure, there is further background on this in a prior thread. We had previously requested USDC as a payment option but it wasn’t considered sustainable since the only source of USDC is from lending reserves.
Regarding pricing, our rates incorporate not just audits but also security advisory, custom monitoring work, and access to OpenZeppelin products such as Defender which is part of our monitoring suite. There was a long forum discussion including bids from other competitors (Trail of Bits, Chainsecurity) last year when the partnership started that would give you more background on how the community decided on us as the best option.