What is slashing? Staking penalties explained

Slashing is a penalty in some proof-of-stake networks that removes part or all of a validator’s staked assets after a provable protocol violation. Networks set their own triggering conditions and penalty calculations.

Under Ethereum’s penalty rules, proposing conflicting blocks for the same slot or signing conflicting votes can be slashable. Slashing also forces the validator to exit. Brief downtime can mean missed rewards and ordinary penalties; it is not automatically a slashing event.

Example: two servers signing at once

Imagine an operator running a primary server and a backup with the same validator signing key. If they both sign different blocks for the same slot, the conflicting signatures can provide evidence of a slashable violation. The absence of malicious intent does not remove the double-signing risk.

There is no universal percentage deducted across every network. On Ethereum, other validators being slashed around the same period can increase the penalty. Checking whether a machine is online is therefore not enough to assess its signing behavior.

Using a pool does not automatically eliminate validator risk. How a loss reaches participants depends on the protocol’s arrangements. Our Lido analysis separates deposited stake, reward flows and the rights associated with different tokens.

The risk and exit assessment in our Lido review explains how pooled staking risks affect a user’s withdrawal decision.