75 validators on the Ethereum 2.0 network were slashed at one time tonight. Unlike common penalties, such as when a node is idle, slashing is used in more serious situations that potentially threaten the network’s performance and is intended to discourage malicious actions by users. Such a validator loses part of the ETH deposited, along with the opportunity to earn rewards. Since there is approximately still more than a year left before the activation of transfers in Ethereum 2.0, the remaining ETH will remain dead weight in the validator’s wallet until that time.
Although slashing has previously been used in the Ethereum 2.0 network, this is the first time it is happening on this scale. In total, 114 validators have been slashed since the launch of the updated blockchain in December 2020, with most of them added to this list today. Most often, slashing is the result of bad practices by validators, which go to various tricks to avoid potential penalties or improve their performance, but as a result they only make their situation worse. It happened this time as well.
Representatives of the staking service Staked, to which 75 affected validators belonged, made a mistake when they tried to increase the attestation rates. Attestation is a vote of validators for a block proposed by one of them.
“While we always prioritize reliability over downtime, we still broke that rule,” explains Staked. – ETH2 has led to a new set of performance criteria. Blockchain reviewers publish attestation metrics, which is the percentage of blocks you successfully signed when you should have done so. This affects the income of the clients, and we were very focused on making the income of our clients the highest. ”
Over the past six weeks, Staked has implemented a number of performance enhancements to ensure the highest level of validation. In test conditions, everything worked well, however, under real load, Staked validators began to reload more often than expected, which led to them signing blocks twice and subsequent slashing. The blockchain explorer cites “attestation violation” as the reason for slashing for all affected validators today.
Staked admits that the performance improvements they achieved weren’t worth the risk of slashing along with them, but prior to that, they had confidence in their system’s performance. However, as it turned out later, testing in limited conditions did not allow for all scenarios.
The service has already made the necessary changes to prevent such situations in the future and promised to pay compensation to customers for lost ETH and lost rewards.
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