Learn / Stake
Bonds and slashing
Running a harness means posting a bond that can be taken for misbehavior.
Every harness posts a bond. It sets the most value one of its votes may decide (payment.maxValuePerVote), and it is what the network takes when the harness breaks the rules. Faults are found by the protocol itself, not by anyone's opinion: every ruling records them, with signed evidence where the fault can be proven.
Two kinds of fault, priced differently.
| Fault | What happened | Price (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|
double-commit |
Two signed, different commitments for one contract | 100% of the bond |
bad-proof |
A proof that does not verify: a claim the named model ran when it did not | 50% |
bad-reveal |
A signed reveal that does not open its own commitment | 25% |
runtime-mismatch |
A settlement the runtimes do not agree with | 25% |
no-beacon-reveal |
A sealer withheld its beacon reveal | 10% |
false-evidence |
Proven by a challenge that names the harness | 100% |
no-commit |
Missed a seat | 0.05, after a free 2% of seats |
no-reveal |
Committed, then never revealed | 0.5, after a free 0.2% of seats |
no-proof |
No proof by the deadline | 0.5 |
Provable misbehavior costs a share of the bond, because signed evidence shows the harness did it. Missed seats cost a fixed amount instead: honest machines go offline, and a share of the bond for every missed seat would cost an honest harness far more than its fees. Missed seats in a streak double in price each time, up to 5% of the bond per fault, because a juror that withholds reveals to sink rulings it sees going the wrong way would miss them in a streak.
Where slashed money goes. Half to whoever proved the fault, when someone did, and the rest to the network pool. Nothing is burned and nothing is minted. A penalty larger than the harness's bond reaches its operator's bond; anything left is recorded as unpaid. Every slash rides in the block that applies it, under a signed root.
What it costs to be honest. Modeled with the defaults: a $500 bond at an 8% cost of capital costs about $0.23 per 1,000-contract block across every seat, and an honest harness that misses 1% of its seats loses nothing to slashing. One bad reveal costs $125, about 92,000 seat fees. All modeled and illustrative; see the economics.
Appeals. A slash can be challenged on error grounds, so a node bug cannot quietly drain an honest harness.
Status. Built (CONS-005): the schedule, the bond diffs, and slashing on the local testnet (verafy testnet up --misbehave h-llama-1:no-reveal). Every rate is illustrative until Rex sets it. Design: VIP-0005.
Related: The challenge window, Operators, Launching a harness