EIP-6988: Elected block proposer has not been slashed

Prevents a slashed validator from being elected as a block proposer


Metadata
Status: StagnantStandards Track: CoreCreated: 2023-05-04
Authors
Mikhail Kalinin (@mkalinin)

Abstract


Introduces a modification to the consensus layer specification which ensures that slashed validator cannot be elected as block proposer.

Motivation


A block proposed by a slashed validator is rejected by the corresponding validity check in the phase0/process_block_header function as defined in the consensus layer specification.

At the same time the definition of the phase0/compute_proposer_index allows for a slashed validator to be elected as a proposer. This contradiction effectively leads to a missed proposal if it is supposed to be made by a slashed validator.

The impact of the proposed fix in the case of a single slashing on Ethereum Mainnet is negligible but it becomes significant in the case of correlated slashings. For instance, a correlated slashing of 1/10th of a validator set can lead to 1/10th of missed proposals in a number of epochs after the slashing.

Specification


Specification of the proposed change can be found in /_features/eip6988/beacon-chain.md.

Rationale


Modifying get_beacon_proposer_index

This function is modified to read a proposer index from a beacon state if a slot of a latest block header is the same as the state.slot.

This modification is done to make the function return correct proposer index in the case when the proposer of a given block is being slashed during processing of the block.

Backwards Compatibility


This fix changes proposer election mechanism in a backwards incompatible way and requires a hard fork to be deployed.

Test Cases


The following test cases were added to cover this change:

Reference Implementation


Reference implementation is in the same place as Specification.

Security Considerations


There are no observed security issues introduced by the proposed change.

Copyright


Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.