7 ms·

Totally wrong. Anybody has the ability to declare "the people with stakes did not validate correctly" In this context, what it means is that a person posted co

by drcode 4y ago

Totally wrong. Anybody has the ability to declare "the people with stakes did not validate correctly" In this context, what it means is that a person posted conflicting validation messages on different parts of the network, and anybody who can show the existence of two such conflicting messages can post it to the blockchain, receive a reward, and the offending validator gets slashed. (There are also other ways you can get slashed, read the POS documentation if you want to learn the details) All methods of slashing are fully decentralized.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
What if they then show bogus evidence
- chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
  There's no such thing as bogus evidence. Block signatures are validated cryptographically
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    But all evidence needs to be voted on. Even it's just a divine truth bool, the network still needs to vote on a consensus of whether or not it says TRUE. edit: for an example. you get hacked and lose $100M. You say fuck it, submit a slasher report that says it wasn't a valid transaction. you offer enough money to get x% of validators to agree with you. As far as I can tell, you cannot get slashed for your vote on a slash. So lying is ok.
    - Zamicol 4y ago
      If a network "votes down" cryptographic proof, that itself becomes cryptographic proof of dishonesty.
      - spywaregorilla 4y ago
        And... so what? Is there a mechanism to punish validators for not being honest on slasher votes?
        735409264082 4y ago
        You don't recognise their actions and let them fork of into a useless chain. This happens automatically, just as when a miner would mine an invalid block.
    - exo762 4y ago
      I'm sorry. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what slashing is. Slashing is just a tx. It is included (or not) just as any other tx. There is no magical dance, there is no voting process. You are basically stating that slashing is impossible in certain conditions because network is not censorship resistant. There is one avenue where network can censor. It is a 51% coalition that orphans blocks that contains slashing txes. This coalition is dealt with UASF (user activated soft fork), since this type of behavior goes against core principals of the network and convincing people to do it will be really easy.
    - spicybright 4y ago
      It's a shame you're being downvoted as your post has substance. This is a genuine issue worth discussing. Validators are run by people who fully control if a transaction is valid or not. You either need a ton of GPUs (currently) or a ton of money to have tangible influence over translations. This isn't even a hypothetical, there's a few massive wallets that are hoarding a ton of eth that will be given more power from the POS transition. We're relying on "the goodness of their hearts" validator operators and crossing our fingers validators run the same software with the same rules. Even if you call out sketchy transactions that are close to 50/50 consensus, nothing will happen unless a ton of people have a ton of money on the line like the DAO split. We need more discussion on how incentives of each party should be to give the most stable network possible.
      - michaelsbradley 4y ago
        > there's a few massive wallets that are hoarding a ton of eth that will be given more power from the POS transition It's not as if they're automatically given more power. Such hoards of ETH would need to be deposited in units of 32 ETH to activate unique validators. You could have a large number of validators that are actually a single computer program participating in the Beacon chain, but that doesn't make too much difference. At the bottom layer, we're talking about the application of an open p2p protocol on the Internet. People can and will analyze the traffic for that protocol, and it will be possible to identify rough shapes and sizes of players in the network. And such analyses won't be long in coming to public blog posts, etc. following the Merge. If decentralization in the network seems at risk, there will be efforts to remedy the situation. Whether they can succeed is another question.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      > submit a slasher report that says it wasn't a valid transaction...offer enough money to get x% of validators to agree That's not how this works at all. Slashing happens under a very specific circumstance: a staker submits contradictory messages. Those circumstances are testable with built-in code that's part of the protocol. To get someone slashed, you send a transaction including their contradictory signed messages. When your transaction is included in a block, the staker gets slashed by the protocol rules hardcoded in all the consensus clients. The only other thing that can cause a staker to lose stake is the "inactivity leak," where an active staking node doesn't send the messages they're supposed to send. That's completely automatic.
    - 735409264082 4y ago
      > edit: for an example. you get hacked and lose $100M. You say fuck it, submit a slasher report that says it wasn't a valid transaction. you offer enough money to get x% of validators to agree with you. That's not what slashing is supposed to be used for, but if that situation happened again, Ethereum would fork again, just as last time when Ethereum classic didn't agree to freeze the Ether from the DAO hack. PoS makes it a little easier to fork (which is good imo), but doesn't change anything fundamental. Everyone still needs to be in complete agreement about the rules and history for Ethereum to work.
- leppr 4y ago
  Then the software will automatically discard the evidence. I would suggest to stop spamming the HN comment section and read the introductory articles people helpfully linked you to.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    It's a simple question. No need for ad hom.
    - Karunamon 4y ago
      What GP posted is not an ad hom; they did not argue for or against anything, and even if they did it wasn't based on the characteristics of the speaker.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        > I would suggest to stop spamming the HN comment section and read the introductory articles people helpfully linked you to.
        Karunamon 4y ago
        Yep, this is what was said. It is not an argument for or against any point under discussion. Ad hominem is "you are wrong because you (fill in the blank)". It is not "go read the articles given to you". "You are wrong because you are an idiot" is ad hominem. "You are wrong" is denial. "You are an idiot" is insult.
        ethbr0 4y ago
        "You are spamming the HN comments and didn't read links, therefore your question is invalid, because of who asked it" is ad hominem. It's easy enough not to reply. No need to get an attitude about it.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  The evidence isn't like a Youtube video.
- Zetaphor 4y ago
  This would require forging the existence of an invalid block signed with the key of the validator you're claiming should be slashed, which is not possible
kmeisthax 4y ago
I should point out that because Ethereum is a dark forest[0], slashers will collapse to a subset of stakers. More specifically, anyone who is not a staker is at the mercy of the mempool[1] to broadcast their slashing transaction and at the mercy of other stakers to correctly record it. There is no economic incentive to do so, and no way to constrain the software such that stakers cannot manipulate the slashing message to take the payout for themselves. And since regular users who slash don't get rewarded for it, there is less incentive to actually bother watching the watchmen. [0] https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest [1] No clue if this has a different name in Ethereum
- dannyw 4y ago
  This isn't exactly correct: 1. Every full node is part of this dark forest, maintains its own mempool, and gossips the mempool to others. You do not have to be a validator or miner to run a full node; just run an Ethereum client. 2. There are indirect economic incentives to 'watch the watchmen': a slashable staking violation that doesn't get slashed breaks the Ethereum security model, and is expected to be an extremely rare event (if it ever happens). With a network that has a market cap in the hundreds of billions; someone is watching and it only takes one to sound the horn.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Every full node can still manipulate the transaction to make it look like they are slashing rather than the person who originally reported the fraud. This is also a "hey why not, its free money" kind of incentive. I do agree that there probably will be altruistic validators in some cases, but the economic incentives work against them. The history of cryptocurrency has trended towards doing the minimum amount of validation work that satisfies network consensus[0]. It's entirely possible that the market just shrugs its shoulders and says that a violation of the Ethereum security model just isn't actually that bad. Consider the relative lack of concern over MEV[1] and automated arbitrage bots, and the fact that the valuation of the coin is entirely unconnected to any security issues it may or may not have. It may just wind up being the case that the network just... tolerates a handful of people getting screwed. [0] For example, Bitcoin miners accept new blocks by literally joining other mining pools purely to steal their previous block hash. It's significantly faster than waiting for a full 4MB block to get P2P gossiped around the world, but the downside is that you can't actually validate any of the data in that block. This effectively means that miners aren't full nodes anymore, and the result has been several long chainsplits and reorgs whenever a softfork occurs. [1] Miner Extractable Value
MR4D 4y ago
Who slashes the Slashers? (with apologies to The Watchmen) EDIT: Clarification - once a slasher posts the violation, who removes the ether?
- dannyw 4y ago
  Every Ethereum client (whether you are a staker or not; you can run a full node without staking!) recognises slashing transactions, and debits the balance of the misbehaving staker in their records. In other words, the blockchain; in the same way that it's not _miners_ / stakers who process transactions on bitcoin or ethereum ; miners / stakers only decide _ordering_ but everyone who runs an Ethereum client is processing and verifying every transaction; the same way your browser checks a TLS certificate.
  - MR4D 4y ago
    So, since the client is debiting the slasher, then THAT transaction is an ether transaction on the chain, and it gets reviewed just like any other transaction as well? Thanks for your answer!
- drcode 4y ago
  To answer "who removes the ether": The value in a staking account is calculated on the blockchain as "amount staked minus slashing penalties", and this violation is automatically recorded as a slashing penalty, so the answer is "everybody"

by drcode 4y ago

spywaregorilla 4y ago

What if they then show bogus evidence

chizhik-pyzhik 4y ago
There's no such thing as bogus evidence. Block signatures are validated cryptographically
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  But all evidence needs to be voted on. Even it's just a divine truth bool, the network still needs to vote on a consensus of whether or not it says TRUE. edit: for an example. you get hacked and lose $100M. You say fuck it, submit a slasher report that says it wasn't a valid transaction. you offer enough money to get x% of validators to agree with you. As far as I can tell, you cannot get slashed for your vote on a slash. So lying is ok.
  - Zamicol 4y ago
    If a network "votes down" cryptographic proof, that itself becomes cryptographic proof of dishonesty.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      And... so what? Is there a mechanism to punish validators for not being honest on slasher votes?
      - 735409264082 4y ago
        You don't recognise their actions and let them fork of into a useless chain. This happens automatically, just as when a miner would mine an invalid block.
  - exo762 4y ago
    I'm sorry. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what slashing is. Slashing is just a tx. It is included (or not) just as any other tx. There is no magical dance, there is no voting process. You are basically stating that slashing is impossible in certain conditions because network is not censorship resistant. There is one avenue where network can censor. It is a 51% coalition that orphans blocks that contains slashing txes. This coalition is dealt with UASF (user activated soft fork), since this type of behavior goes against core principals of the network and convincing people to do it will be really easy.
  - spicybright 4y ago
    It's a shame you're being downvoted as your post has substance. This is a genuine issue worth discussing. Validators are run by people who fully control if a transaction is valid or not. You either need a ton of GPUs (currently) or a ton of money to have tangible influence over translations. This isn't even a hypothetical, there's a few massive wallets that are hoarding a ton of eth that will be given more power from the POS transition. We're relying on "the goodness of their hearts" validator operators and crossing our fingers validators run the same software with the same rules. Even if you call out sketchy transactions that are close to 50/50 consensus, nothing will happen unless a ton of people have a ton of money on the line like the DAO split. We need more discussion on how incentives of each party should be to give the most stable network possible.
    - michaelsbradley 4y ago
      > there's a few massive wallets that are hoarding a ton of eth that will be given more power from the POS transition It's not as if they're automatically given more power. Such hoards of ETH would need to be deposited in units of 32 ETH to activate unique validators. You could have a large number of validators that are actually a single computer program participating in the Beacon chain, but that doesn't make too much difference. At the bottom layer, we're talking about the application of an open p2p protocol on the Internet. People can and will analyze the traffic for that protocol, and it will be possible to identify rough shapes and sizes of players in the network. And such analyses won't be long in coming to public blog posts, etc. following the Merge. If decentralization in the network seems at risk, there will be efforts to remedy the situation. Whether they can succeed is another question.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    > submit a slasher report that says it wasn't a valid transaction...offer enough money to get x% of validators to agree That's not how this works at all. Slashing happens under a very specific circumstance: a staker submits contradictory messages. Those circumstances are testable with built-in code that's part of the protocol. To get someone slashed, you send a transaction including their contradictory signed messages. When your transaction is included in a block, the staker gets slashed by the protocol rules hardcoded in all the consensus clients. The only other thing that can cause a staker to lose stake is the "inactivity leak," where an active staking node doesn't send the messages they're supposed to send. That's completely automatic.
  - 735409264082 4y ago
    > edit: for an example. you get hacked and lose $100M. You say fuck it, submit a slasher report that says it wasn't a valid transaction. you offer enough money to get x% of validators to agree with you. That's not what slashing is supposed to be used for, but if that situation happened again, Ethereum would fork again, just as last time when Ethereum classic didn't agree to freeze the Ether from the DAO hack. PoS makes it a little easier to fork (which is good imo), but doesn't change anything fundamental. Everyone still needs to be in complete agreement about the rules and history for Ethereum to work.
leppr 4y ago
Then the software will automatically discard the evidence. I would suggest to stop spamming the HN comment section and read the introductory articles people helpfully linked you to.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
- ethbr0 4y ago
  It's a simple question. No need for ad hom.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    What GP posted is not an ad hom; they did not argue for or against anything, and even if they did it wasn't based on the characteristics of the speaker.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      > I would suggest to stop spamming the HN comment section and read the introductory articles people helpfully linked you to.
      - Karunamon 4y ago
        Yep, this is what was said. It is not an argument for or against any point under discussion. Ad hominem is "you are wrong because you (fill in the blank)". It is not "go read the articles given to you". "You are wrong because you are an idiot" is ad hominem. "You are wrong" is denial. "You are an idiot" is insult.
        ethbr0 4y ago
        "You are spamming the HN comments and didn't read links, therefore your question is invalid, because of who asked it" is ad hominem. It's easy enough not to reply. No need to get an attitude about it.
madeofpalk 4y ago
The evidence isn't like a Youtube video.
Zetaphor 4y ago
This would require forging the existence of an invalid block signed with the key of the validator you're claiming should be slashed, which is not possible

kmeisthax 4y ago

I should point out that because Ethereum is a dark forest[0], slashers will collapse to a subset of stakers. More specifically, anyone who is not a staker is at the mercy of the mempool[1] to broadcast their slashing transaction and at the mercy of other stakers to correctly record it. There is no economic incentive to do so, and no way to constrain the software such that stakers cannot manipulate the slashing message to take the payout for themselves. And since regular users who slash don't get rewarded for it, there is less incentive to actually bother watching the watchmen. [0] https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest [1] No clue if this has a different name in Ethereum

dannyw 4y ago
This isn't exactly correct: 1. Every full node is part of this dark forest, maintains its own mempool, and gossips the mempool to others. You do not have to be a validator or miner to run a full node; just run an Ethereum client. 2. There are indirect economic incentives to 'watch the watchmen': a slashable staking violation that doesn't get slashed breaks the Ethereum security model, and is expected to be an extremely rare event (if it ever happens). With a network that has a market cap in the hundreds of billions; someone is watching and it only takes one to sound the horn.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Every full node can still manipulate the transaction to make it look like they are slashing rather than the person who originally reported the fraud. This is also a "hey why not, its free money" kind of incentive. I do agree that there probably will be altruistic validators in some cases, but the economic incentives work against them. The history of cryptocurrency has trended towards doing the minimum amount of validation work that satisfies network consensus[0]. It's entirely possible that the market just shrugs its shoulders and says that a violation of the Ethereum security model just isn't actually that bad. Consider the relative lack of concern over MEV[1] and automated arbitrage bots, and the fact that the valuation of the coin is entirely unconnected to any security issues it may or may not have. It may just wind up being the case that the network just... tolerates a handful of people getting screwed. [0] For example, Bitcoin miners accept new blocks by literally joining other mining pools purely to steal their previous block hash. It's significantly faster than waiting for a full 4MB block to get P2P gossiped around the world, but the downside is that you can't actually validate any of the data in that block. This effectively means that miners aren't full nodes anymore, and the result has been several long chainsplits and reorgs whenever a softfork occurs. [1] Miner Extractable Value

MR4D 4y ago

Who slashes the Slashers? (with apologies to The Watchmen) EDIT: Clarification - once a slasher posts the violation, who removes the ether?

dannyw 4y ago
Every Ethereum client (whether you are a staker or not; you can run a full node without staking!) recognises slashing transactions, and debits the balance of the misbehaving staker in their records. In other words, the blockchain; in the same way that it's not _miners_ / stakers who process transactions on bitcoin or ethereum ; miners / stakers only decide _ordering_ but everyone who runs an Ethereum client is processing and verifying every transaction; the same way your browser checks a TLS certificate.
- MR4D 4y ago
  So, since the client is debiting the slasher, then THAT transaction is an ether transaction on the chain, and it gets reviewed just like any other transaction as well? Thanks for your answer!
drcode 4y ago
To answer "who removes the ether": The value in a staking account is calculated on the blockchain as "amount staked minus slashing penalties", and this violation is automatically recorded as a slashing penalty, so the answer is "everybody"