Dozens of Ethereum 2.0 Validators Slashed Due to Staking Pool Error

75 validators were suspended from Ethereum 2.0 in a slashing event due to an operational bug by Staked, an ETH2 staking pool, which led to competing blocks produced on the network.

Ethereum 2.0 Staking Pool Introduces a Bug 

Staked was using Prysm’s client and had separately introduced performance upgrades to improve validating blocks’ efficiency. However, their upgrades introduced a bug into the network. 

Due to the bug, validators began signing different versions of the same block, essentially creating another chain. Consequently, 75 validators were slashed from the network. The company published a press release as an explanation. It wrote: 

“Staked chased technical performance over double-signing robustness and that’s not a good trade-off. No customers were harmed in this interaction but it was an expensive lesson for Staked.”

The slashing penalty is 18 ETH or around $30,000, and the staking pool will reimburse the total amount lost by individuals and future losses during the downtime.

The company has decided to discard the earlier attempts at bypassing Prysm’s default restrictions. It has introduced a new change that will wait for all the blocks to sync before participating with validators.

Staking pools allow users with less than the minimum amount of 32 ETH to participate in staking, and Staked is one of the leading pools with a 9% share that has been popular because of its higher than average yields. 

Ethereum 2.0 network currently has over 91,300 active validators with $4.8 billion ETH staked, earning 8.17% annually in Ethereum.

Disclosure: The author held Bitcoin at the time of press.