ETH Ecosystem Detects 226 Validator Slashes Since 2020

Since December 1st, 2020 when the Beacon Chain was launched, only about 226 validator slashes have taken place on the Ethereum (ETH) protocol. 

Based on a Twitter post made by an Ethereum core developer identified as Superphiz, this value represents only 0.04% of the 524,060 validators in the ETH ecosystem. Notably, 75 of these slashes occurred in a single incident that was encountered two years ago by Staked which has now been acquired by crypto firm Kraken. 

Superphiz highlights the fact that a major percentage of the total validator slashing was contributed by service as against the thought that they were caused by home stakers. 

Precisely, the slashing process involves a violation of the standard Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism rules by the validator. When this happens, the validator is displaced from the network and a portion of the ETH that he initially staked as collateral is slashed. 

Core Developer Suggests Unplugging to Avoid Slashing

The ETH core developer stated that the odds of having such situations are quite slim, therefore, it shouldn’t be a reason why people decide to stake their Ether. 

He went ahead to suggest four ’emerging best practices to avoid the odds further. One of them is the use of doppelganger detection which verify if the validator keys are already active while any of their duties is suspended.

Also, Superphiz advised that stakers do not try to save time by reusing their old chain data, instead, they should clear the previous chain data on their old staking machines.

“Reinstall, reformat, and reduce the odds that a lingering service will sting you,” he tweeted. The ETH core developer believes that perfect uptime is not a good enough reason to get slashed as a validator. “It’s wise to throw away $0.06 to save $1700. (A slashing costs about 1 Ether).”

Ultimately, he suggests unplugging when the validator feels a hunch about the transaction. 

Meanwhile, it has been discovered that the Merge (the transition from Proof-of-work to Proof-of-stake consensus mechanism) which happened last year, has not had a significant impact on the slashing rate. Out of all of the slashed validators, only 35 of them have happened since the Merge.