What is slashing, and which validator actions trigger it?

In brief

Proof-of-stake validators lock collateral to participate in consensus. Slashing is a more severe penalty for certain rule violations, involving loss of staked ETH and a forced exit.

Three slashable behaviors

Ethereum's rules cover proposing and signing two different blocks for the same slot, making a surrounding attestation, and double voting.

These concern conflicting consensus messages. They are different from simply failing to perform a duty.

Being offline is not itself slashing

While the network is finalizing normally, missing duties incurs ordinary penalties rather than slashing. The distinction matters when evaluating an operator's reliability and the possible consequences of an outage.

How the penalty develops

The Turkish source describes an initial penalty on day 1 of 1/4096 of the effective balance, capped at 0.5 ETH, a correlation penalty around day 18, and an exit-related timeline of roughly 36 days.

The correlation penalty depends on how much stake is slashed within the relevant period. The source contrasts a small isolated penalty with severe losses during a large correlated event.

These protocol-sensitive numbers and the distinction between exit and withdrawal timing require editorial rechecking before publication.

What it means for staking

A user who stakes through a service may bear losses if that service's validators are slashed, depending on its terms. Shared infrastructure can expose many validators to the same operational failure.

Running the same validator key in more than one place can produce conflicting signatures. Malicious intent is not required for an operational mistake to trigger a penalty.

How CryptoAlpha uses this

For staking and restaking services, the questions are when losses occur, who bears them and whether that allocation is written into the terms. This guide does not evaluate any particular provider.