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Eigen Labs is currently preparing many governance documents and changes to our contract documentation that will provide additional context and detail on the Slashing release.

In the interest of helping AVS prepare in advance of the Testnet release, we are providing this document.

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What

EigenLayer is a platform for protocol participants to make credible commitments to one another. On EigenLayer, AVSs have tools to make economic commitments to their end users, such as proper or fair execution of their code run by Operators. With Rewards v2, EigenLayer enables AVSs to issue rewards to Operators and Stakers when the AVS’ services are properly run (the carrot). With this Slashing upgrade, EigenLayer will give AVSs the ability to slash stake in instances where the commitments to properly run their services are provably broken (the stick).

The Slashing upgrade strengthens the credible commitments AVSs can make to their users by penalizing (i.e. slashing) Operators for not properly running their services. These commitments are designed and deployed by AVSs, and can range from faults like incorrect computation, liveness failures, and more. Explicitly, this upgrade adds two new features to facilitate the slashing mechanism: [Unique Stake and Operator Sets](https://www.blog.eigenlayer.xyz/introducing-the-eigenlayer-security-model/#:~:text=Operator Sets are Versatile and Extensible&text=It can specify slashing conditions,these rewards will be distributed.).

Unique Stake guarantees that an Operator’s specific slashable stake can be allocated only to one AVS at a particular time. This single pairing strengthens the AVS's security without creating exogenous risk to other AVSs or the protocol at large. Operator Sets provide an in-protocol structure that enshrines the segmentation of Operators into local groups for the accounting, allocation, and slashing of staked security.

Together these features enable:

  1. Opt-in task-specific slashing for Operators, where they may take on slashing risk in return for AVS rewards,
  2. Launching of more AVSs on mainnet, by giving them tools to make more cryptoeconomic commitments to their users,
  3. Use of the Unique Stake model by ecosystem participants to better understand risk, reward, and operating models for AVS infrastructure.

With Unique Stake and Operator Sets, Operators have fine-grained control over slashable stake in accordance with their acceptable risk and competencies. These unlock slashing, slashing unlocks the creativity of AVSs, and unlocking AVS creativity allows them to reach users and reward Stakers and Operators.

When

The projected testnet date is 12/19. This may be subject to change.

How It Will Affect you

The slashing upgrade introduces the following specific features on EigenLayer: