Not so risky staking – In December 2020, the beacon chain was launched in parallel with the network Ethereum. This was finally connected to the application layer in September 2022. This made it possible to finalize the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Two years after its launch, the results vis-à-vis the slashing seems positive.
Slashing: the punishment for bad validators on Ethereum
In order to ensure that validators take their mission seriously, Ethereum has penalties for breach. These can apply in various situations:
- If the validator is offline for too long;
- When inactive validators result in a “activity leak”.
In addition to these penalties which result in a minor sanction on the validator’s stake, another mechanism more punitive exists: the slashing.
Concretely, slashing is a much more impactful punishment that aims to punish validators who have behavior deemed malicious. This applies when a validator performs one of the following actions:
- Offers two different blocks in one slot;
- Submits two different attestations in a single era;
- Submits an attestation that completely bypasses another attestation.
Because of this, many users are reluctant to operate a validator node on their own for fear of being slashed and seeing their staking ETH squandered.
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Very few validators slashed since 2020
Despite the impression of danger created by the mechanism of slashing of Ethereum, this one can only be seen very rarely. Indeed, according to data shared by developer @Supherphiz, only 0.04% some validators have already experimented with slashing. It is only equivalent to 226 validators out of the 523,000 that make up the network.
Note that more validators have potentially suffered minor penalties due to technical issues on their nodes. Nevertheless, as pointed out Mark Zeller d’Aave last September, the penalty amounts are not not amazing.
As an illustration, a node operated by BitMex, which had been offline for a week, suffered a loss of only 0.015 ETH on its stake, a little less than 20 dollars at the time of the facts. This is approximately 0.002 ETH per day, or $2.5 per day penalty.
Supherphiz also revealed that most nodes were slashed during a failed system migration. To avoid this, he offers us 4 best practices to adopt :
- Completely reset his old staking machine. This involves deleting everything and re-downloading the entire channel data;
- Use a duplicate detection tool. This ensures that another validator instance is not running. Indeed, operating two instances of the same validator can lead to slashing;
- Take your time and act wisely. It is essential to remain methodical in order to ensure that all migration steps are respected;
- accept not knowing. It’s better to take a small loss while being offline than to make a mistake that can result in a bigger slash. Do your research properly and call on a more competent person if necessary.
After the transition to Proof of Stake last September, Ethereum is about to experience a new update via the Shanghai hard fork. This will take place next March and will allow the withdrawal of ETH deposited in staking.
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