Slashing

What is slashing?

Slashing is a penalty system. If a validator misses their duties, such as not validating a block in time, they can lose a portion of their staked KUB. The deducted amount then gets awarded to the official pool as a reward. Slashing in the KUB network ensures that validators meant to secure the network act in the best interests of all users. If a validator doesn’t perform its duties, slashing comes into play.

Tracking

After the first warning, the system starts tracking the validator's performance for roughly 24 hours. This tracking period is called the Slashing Epoch, which lasts 345 spans.

Slashing Threshold

Suppose a validator misses block validations repeatedly and reaches a threshold of 50 spans (approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes) within 345 spans (approximately 24 hours) for the slash epoch in a network of KUB, the validator will be slashed. However, the counter resets if they don’t reach this threshold or if it reaches 345 spans.

Penalty Amount

The amount of the penalty depends on the type of node:

• Pool Node: 100 KUB penalty

• Solo Node: 0.1% of the validator’s staked amount

Before penalizing validators, there will be issued warnings as an initial measure against missed duties.

Once a validator doesn't propagate its block in time, the official node steps in. The official node creates a block, adds a slashing transaction, and signs it. This transaction triggers the SlashManager smart contract, which takes care of the slashing procedure based on the abovementioned rules.