Popular Science: Frequently Asked Questions about Ethereum 2.0 Validators

Editor's Note: This article comes fromEthereum enthusiasts (ID: ethfans)Editor's Note: This article comes from

, author: Eth2 Validator Launchpad, translation & proofreading: Min Min & A Jian, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Introduction

Editor's Note: This article is from the "Validator FAQ" page of the Eth2 Validator Quick Starter, and focuses on listing and answering questions related to participating in validating activities. The Quick Starter page also has a "Participation Notice" page, which also reminds you of the risks associated with participating in verification activities, which can be cross-referenced. However, the content overlap is high, so it is not recorded here. The multilingual support of the quick launcher is still being implemented, and I believe we will meet you soon.

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Introduction

1. What exactly is a "validator"?

Validators are entities that participate in the consensus mechanism of the ETH 2.0 protocol.

In the vernacular, it is a person who continues to run a specific piece of computer program. This program proposes and attests to new blocks so that they can be added to the blockchain.

In other words, you can think of validators as voters for new blocks. The more votes a block has, the more likely it is to be added to the blockchain.

Importantly, a validator's voting weight is determined by the amount it has at stake.

2. What is a deposit contract?

You can think of a margin contract as a fund transfer channel between an Ethereum account and an ETH 2.0 validator.

The state of the deposit contract specifies who deposits the deposit, who participates in the verification, how much the deposit is, and who can withdraw the funds.

3. Why do validators need to deposit a security deposit first?

The system needs to withhold funds from validators in order to punish a validator if it is proven to be misbehaving.

In other words, in order to ensure that these validators abide by the agreement, the actions of these validators must have economic consequences.

4. How much ETH does the verifier need to pledge?

Before a validator can start securing the network, ta needs to stake 32 ETH. This 32 ETH is the validator's initial balance.

5. Is there any benefit to staking more than 32 ETH?

Setting the effective stake at 32 ETH helps decentralize power by preventing a single validator from voting too heavily.

Remember that a validator's voting weight is determined by their stake amount.

(Translator's Note: In fact, the validator's voting weight depends on its "effective balance (effect balance)". The effective balance is not the surface balance of the account. The effective balance has an upper limit of "32". Assuming a validator has been working hard Diligently making money, its effective balance will not exceed "32". Similarly, when it is confiscated, it will not be fined more than 32 ETH at one time. The original term here is "the amount it has at stake", although It is also too vague, but obviously it cannot be directly translated into "the amount that the verifier has deposited". There is no Chinese equivalent to "at stake" without being cumbersome, so it is helpless to translate it as "the amount of rights and interests" here)

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Validator Responsibilities

1. How do economic incentives help users stay active and honest?

• In addition to being penalized for being offline, validators can also be penalized for doing evil — for example, voting for invalid or conflicting blocks.

• On the other hand, a validator is rewarded if the block proposed/witnessed by the validator is added to the blockchain.

• The basic concepts are:

Actions that help the network reach consensus are rewarded

Inadvertent actions (or inaction) that impede consensus incur minor penalties

Serious penalties (or slashing) for malicious behavior

In other words, validators are contributing to the entire network while working hard to earn rewards.

2. How are rewards/punishments distributed?

Remember, each validator has its own balance - the initial balance can be seen in the deposit contract.

The Ethereum network rules regularly update validators' balances based on their performance.

In other words, the rewards and punishments obtained by the verifier will be reflected in the balance.

3. How long are rewards/punishments issued?

Emitted approximately every 6.5 minutes (ie, one epoch). During each epoch, the network evaluates the performance of each validator and rewards or punishes them accordingly.

4. What is the reward/penalty amount?

This question is difficult to answer because there are many factors to consider when calculating.

The rewards for validating transactions are mainly affected by the total network stake (ie, the total number of validators). Depending on the total stake, the highest annualized rate of return for a validator may be between 2% and 20%.

When the total number of verifiers is fixed, the reward/punishment mainly depends on the balance scale of the verifier - if the verifier who provides the proof has a higher balance, the reward/punishment received by TA will be higher; the lower the balance, the reward/punishment will be higher. The lower the penalty.

Note that this dynamic works in less obvious ways. To understand how it works, you first need to understand the concept of effective balance. If you are not familiar with this concept, we recommend you to read this article (editor's note: see the hyperlink at the end of the article).

5. Why do rewards depend on the total number of validators in the network?

Block rewards are calculated proportionally to the total amount of ETH staked in the network.

To put it simply, if the total equity of ETH is small, the reward (interest rate) is high, but as the amount of equity increases, the reward (interest rate) obtained by each validator will decrease.

• Why this dynamic adjustment? While this article won’t unravel the truth, our intuition tells us that in order for the network to function well, the total number of validators cannot fall below a certain lower limit (as does the total ETH stake). Therefore, in order to incentivize more validators to participate, the interest rate needs to be maintained at a high level until the total number of validators reaches the lower limit.

• 6. What is the penalty for validators if they go offline?

It depends. In addition to the impact of actual balances, there are two important situations to note:

If the vast majority (2/3) of validators are online, the penalty for being offline is lower because enough validators are online to achieve block finality. This is to be expected.

If more than 1/3 of the validators are offline at the same time, the offline penalty will be high, because the network cannot continue to achieve block finality. This is an extreme case that is unlikely to happen.

Note that in the second case, offline validators will gradually lose up to 50% (16 ETH) of their stake over 21 days. After 21 days, the batch of validators will be evicted from the validator pool. This allows the network to return to normal and begin to achieve block finality.

7. What percentage of uptime is required for honest validators to be profitable?

In general, validators are profitable as long as their uptime exceeds 50%.

This means that validators do not need backup clients or redundant network connections, as the consequences of going offline are not as severe.

8. What punishment will a validator who behaves maliciously be punished?

Also depends. Malicious behavior (e.g. voting for invalid or conflicting blocks) can result in validators being slashed.

The minimum slash amount is 1 ETH, but this amount will increase if other validators are slashed at the same time.

Its purpose is to minimize the loss suffered by validators due to inadvertent mistakes, while suppressing coordinated attacks.

Penalties have two purposes: (1) to substantially increase the cost of attacking ETH 2.0, making the attack unprofitable; (2) to prevent validators from being lazy by checking whether they fulfill their duties. The so-called slashing means that if a validator is proved to be evil, ta's rights (part of them) will be destroyed.

Verifiers who have been slashed cannot continue to participate in the consensus mechanism of the network and will be forcibly withdrawn.

(Translator's Note: The information that is not obvious in the answers to these questions is: For a verifier, every epoch (6.4 minutes) needs to send an attestation message (attestation, including voting content), and requires The position of the sending time of the message is not fixed in an epoch. Obviously, the fulfillment of the above-mentioned verifier's duties cannot be performed by a manual operation program, and must be automated. Therefore, whether the verifier will be fined or not is highly dependent on The client software used. Therefore, users who intend to run the verifier by themselves must first care about the performance of the client they use and whether the protection measures are in place.)

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key

1. What happens if the signing key is lost?

If the signing key is lost, validators cannot continue to propose and witness blocks.

Over time, the balance of the validator will gradually decrease, because ta will be punished for not being able to participate in the consensus process. Once the validator's balance is only 16 ETH, the system will automatically expel ta from the validator pool.

However, the matter was not entirely hopeless. If the validator's signing key was generated using EIP2334 (according to the default bootstrap process), the signing key can be recalculated from the withdrawal key at any time.

When withdrawing the deposit, the user also needs to use the withdrawal key, and the withdrawal will take about one day to arrive in the account.

Note that the delay period may be extended if there are many people quitting or being kicked out of the validator pool in the same time period.

(Translator's Note: In Phase 0, the function of the verifier to withdraw the security deposit will not be enabled.)

2. What happens if the withdrawal key is lost?

If the withdrawal key is lost, the verifier can never get back his funds.

Therefore, you'd better use mnemonics to create withdrawal keys for backup. If the validator joined through the bootstrap process of the Medalla testnet, the withdrawal key is created by default through the mnemonic.

3. What happens if the withdrawal key is stolen?

If the withdrawal key is stolen, the thief can transfer the verifier's balance, but only after the verifier exits.

If a thief does not have the validator's signing key, there is no way to get the validator out.

The validator can use the signing key to exit the validator pool first, and then use the withdrawal key to transfer funds away before the thief.

(Translator's Note: I think this answer does not remind everyone of the real risk. According to the answer to question 1, if the user's signature key is generated with the withdrawal key, then the person who stole a withdrawal key has It is possible to calculate the withdrawal key used by the verifier, so the withdrawal key of the verifier will also become insecure. Although the method of generating the signature key from the withdrawal key can improve the security of the withdrawal key, this risk does not It does not exist. It should be reminded that the withdrawal key is always the top priority and must be protected. The escape method provided in the answer can only be used when the withdrawal function is normal, but the Phase 0 stage will not Turn on the withdrawal function, and the person who stole the withdrawal key has a long enough time to ambush.)