[Utility][Consensus] PoS Rewards & Slashing Onboarding & Knowledge Transfer

[Olshansk]

Objective

This ☂️ ticket organizes links, references and details to onboard a Protocol Engineer to the protocol team. It acts as a central point of coordination to capture questions, discussions and results to enable a new core team member to own and drive the rewards & slashing mechanisms of the protocol.

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1. Origin Document

One of the core principles of Crypto of Blockchains and crypto is incentive: rewards & slashing for useful or faulty/byzantine behaviour.

The protocol team uses the [E2E Flows Template] e2e-flows-template to detail and scope out work for Utility E2E Flows

• Development Guides - Make sure to start here
• Utility module source code - Make sure to look here
• V1 Utility Specification - Make sure to read here
• Relay Mining Whitepaper
• E2E Testing Framework. Please note that there are in flight updates:
  • [Utility] trustless relay e2e happy case (POC PR) #869
  • [E2E Test] Utilities for State Sync Test #874

2. Knowledge Transfer FAQ

Where is the utility module today?

Rewards & slashing are less than half backed. It has been an afterthought around all the other work going on and some effort needs to be put into understanding the lay of the land:

• What's done?
• What's not done?
• Is it documented anywhere?
• What remains?
• What tooling do we have for it?

2.1 Examples of what's done / not done

Example 1: Is slashing for double signing implemented?

No

Example 2: Is slashing for double signing implemented?

No

Example 3: Do validators get rewards for the blocks they proposed?

Kind of? We don't have an E2E test for this and it's most likely half-baked. Needs to be verified, documented, and tested.

Example 4: Do valid transactions deduct fees? Do invalid transactions deduct fees if available?

Kind of? We have a discussion about it in protocol hour (audio and ULTRA rough whiteboard notes available here)

Example 5: Do Servicers get rewards for relays served?

Not yet.

Hopefully this gives an idea of how early it is.

2.2 Who is working on what?

Who is building the E2E relay flow?

@adshmh 🚄

Who is working on consensus? State Sync?

@red-0ne 🔥

Who is currently building p2p discovery, churn and gossip?

@bryanchriswhite 🌐

Who is currently building state important, export, rollback, validation and guaranteeing efficient data integrity?

@dylanlott 💾

Who is building & maintaining the infrastructure for all of this?

@okdas 🏗️

Who is currently thinking about IBC and related light client implementations?

@h5law 🌲

3. Goals

• Get the utility module to a TestNet ready stage
• Leverage the perspective of someone new in order to update the tooling & documentation
• Identify and resolve low-hanging fruit
• Complete a few starter tasks and one major task
• Determine the missing gaps and define a path forward for utility model w.r.t rewards, slashes and transaction fees
• Identify a co-owner and additional Point of Contact (POC) for the V1 Utility module
• Outline & document follow-up work & tasks to build & scale the utility module
• Focus on things like
  • Slashing for both byzantine and faulty behaviour
  • Rewards for work completed
• Work closely with @red-0ne on the consensus side
• Work closely with @adshmh on the utility side

4. Deliverables

Starter Tasks

• [Core] The Watch Begins #956
• [Consensus] When starting LocalNet from scratch, the first TriggerNextView leads to height 2 and not 1 #441

Larger Tasks

• [Core] Tx Fee Business Logic - Improve State Visibility #325
• [Consensus] Penalize validators for double signing #432
• [Utility] Document tx fee logic (valid, invalid, included in block or not) #477

Stretch Goals

• [P2P] Define outstanding parameters & reasonable defaults #629
• [Utility] Leverage Pocket Errors in the entire codebase #556

Cancelled but useful

• [SPIKE][Utility] Stake ownership user flows #751
• [SPIKE][Utility] Delegated staking user flows #752

Unscoped Tickets to be done after onboarding

• E2E Test for tx fee validation
  • Retrieve funds from the signers?
  • Include transaction in the block?
• E2E ticket for validator rewards?
• E2E ticket for servicer rewards?
• E2E tickets Scope out tickets/work for:
  • Jailing / unjailing
  • Inactivity leaks
  • E2E tests for valid tx fee
  • E2E tests for invalid tx fee

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Creator: @Olshansk
Co-Owners: @0xRampey

[Olshansk]

@0xRampey I have made some other small updates to this ticket, so feel free to leave any questions/comments here as they come up!