Slashing

Operating a validator is a significant responsibility, demanding adherence to stringent standards and ongoing vigilance over the network's operations while actively participating in achieving consensus. Validators failing to meet these criteria face penalties, known as slashing.

When a validator is slashed, they incur a loss of a fraction of their self-staked PRYSM and a portion of their delegators' stakes. Slashed validators are temporarily excluded from securing the network until they rectify the situation to regain active status. During this period, termed "jailed," further slashing is prevented, allowing validators to regroup without exacerbating losses for their delegators.

Slashing occurs under specific circumstances, such as double signing, where a validator mistakenly signs two distinct blocks with the same chain ID at identical heights, attracting the severest penalty of 5% of both the validator's and each delegator's staked positions. Another cause of slashing is downtime, when a validator becomes unreachable and unresponsive for a duration, typically due to service interruptions, incurring a less severe penalty of 0.01% of staked positions for both the validator and each delegator.

Additionally, validators must consistently participate in voting as part of PRYSM blockchain consensus to maintain their integrity and avoid penalties.