In the Ethereum ecosystem only 226 validators have been slashed since the launch of the Beacon Chain on December 1, 2020, which is only 0.04% of 524,060 validatorsaccording to a major Ethereum developer.
Slashing is a process in which a validator breaks proof of staking consensus rules, often resulting in the removal of that validator from the network. and to the removal of a part of the staked Ether (ETH) that the validator provided as collateral.
Ethereum developer “Superphiz” stressed this slim chance of being slashed on a February 23rd Twitter post, which suggests that people should not worry about staking ETH for that particular reason.
226 out of 523,000 validators on the beacon chain have been slashed. This is nothing to lose sleep over. Many slashings have occurred during failed system migration. Here are four emerging best practice tips to avoid this: https://t.co/wleR4YQmDD
—superphiz.eth (@superphiz) February 22, 2023
226 of the 523,000 validators on the Beacon Chain have been slashed. This is nothing to worry about. Many of these outages have occurred during failed system migrations. Here are four emerging best practice tips to avoid this:
The developer also explained “four emerging good practices” to further reduce those odds.
One of these practices was to wipe any existing string data on old staking machines and reinstall and reformat the validator when necessary, Superphiz said, noting that many removals occur due to “failed system migrations.”
Superphiz then suggested using “doppelganger detection”, which checks if the validator keys are active before starting the validation process.
Although this may affect the uptime of the validator, he explained that a “perfect uptime” is not worth the trouble at the end of the day:
“It is wise to lose USD 0.06 to save USD 1,700. (Delete costs about 1 Ether).”
The developer said that It is also worth keeping an eye on the buffers and registers on the beacon chain to be aware of any potential problems that may arise.
If something isn’t right, Superphiz suggests “taking everything offline” and “coming back” when the problem has been identified and a proposed solution has been put in place.
The developer also noted that more than 150 of the 226 outages have been caused by services and not by “domestic stakers”.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, slashes can be due to an “attestation” or “proposal” violation.
An attestation violation is one in which a malicious validator attempts to change the history of a block or “double votes” by attesting two candidates for the same block.
A proposal violation occurs when a validator proposes and signs two different blocks for the same slot.
According to data from beaconcha.in, most cases of slashing are due to attestation violations.
One of the biggest slashes occurred on February 4, 2021, when staking infrastructure provider “Staked” had 75 of its validators cut for producing competing blocks. Staked said the validation violation occurred due to a “technical issue.”
Since the Beacon Chain merged with Ethereum’s proof-of-work chain on September 15, only 35 of the 226 total slashes have occurred, according to beaconcha.in, suggesting that the merger has not had a profound impact on slashing rates.
With some 16.7 million ETH staked (according to beaconcha.in) out of the 120.4 million ETH currently in circulation (according to CoinGecko), the percentage of staked ETH is around 13.9%.
ETH can be staked through a centralized exchange, by delegation to a network of third-party validators, or by running on a standalone node, which requires 32 ETH.
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