Validators
Support of L1 Validators is critical in building the marketplace and creating off-the-shelf product availability for buyers. As such, we have designed both the Marketplace and Product suite to align highly with their interests.
ETHGas is designed to unambiguously earn more than running MEV Boost alone with both minimal risk and minimal technical integration required.
Validators with staking enabled can enjoy certain % of trading revenue via our Staking Incentive Program (Details soon)
To get started, Validators must use Commit Boost and transfer the appropriate Collateral.
Commit Boost
Commit Boost is a sidecar for proposers to create commitments. Validators need to run Commit Boost which uses a validator BLS key to sign messages signaling their intent to register on ETHGas exchange platform and delegate to more sophisticated parties (e.g. our Pricer server) to sell preconfs
Link: https://github.com/ethgas-developer/ethgas-preconf-commit-boost-module
Collateral & Slashing
As long as the validator can successfully propose a block obtained from our relay, the validator is not subject to any slashing risk. We ensure all blocks obtained from our relay honoring all commitments sold from our exchange. If not, we as the platform will be slashed.
What is Considered a Slashable Event?
missing a slot with commitments attached to it
not proposing blocks obtained from our relay
Providing Collateral
Validators are able to provide collateral by either:
Depositing ETH directly to our collateral smart contract on L1 (0x818EF032D736B1a2ECC8556Fc1bC65aEBD8482c5). Note that this collateral will not accrue Consensus/Execution layer rewards during such time, or
Collateral AVS - our Eigenlayer AVS that enables natively staked ETH to be provided as security. See the Collateral AVS page for further information.
ETHGas Exchange also posts collateral as a liveness bond to insure against our platform going offline
Collateral Amounts
Proposers are recommended to post at least 1 ETH collateral per slot as collateral held against the non-delivery of commitments. There are two metrics used for collateral calculation purposes:
Trading Account Collateral
Collateral per Slot
The Trading Account Collateral is the total possible amount of ETH that can be used as collateral. The Collateral per Slot is the total possible amount of ETH that can be used as collateral, per slot.
For example, let's assume a Validator posts 10 ETH as Trading Account Collateral, and then determines the Collateral per Slot to be 1 ETH. This then exposes the Validator to a maximum loss of 1 ETH per slot for up to a maximum of 10 slots of blockspace. In the event the Validator has say 15 slots within the look-ahead, the Validator will only be allowed to sell up to 2/3rds of the blockspace (in any order) accordingly. Once that threshold has been reached, the Validator would need to top-up additional collateral.
The Collateral per Slot will be broadcasted to the Buyers enabling them to price their counterparty risk accordingly. Higher collateral amounts will generally confer greater blockspace prices/rewards to Validators.
While the 1 ETH number is arbitrary, we feel it provides an accessible/sufficient threshold to Buyers in the near-term, and yet is still accessible to most larger Validators for which will be the early adopters. As more information is gathered, both preconf buyers and the market in general will be able to better understand and price counterparty risk accordingly. As such, collateral requirements may change subject to market conditions and further research.
Execution of Slashing Event
The slashing happens when the block is finalized, i.e. 2 epochs after the block is proposed, our backend will debit certain amount of collateral from validators and credit proportional amount of collateral to the affected preconf/whole block buyers internally in our database where the user balance can be queried from our API. Then, users can request withdrawal to get back the ETH collateral to their on-chain wallets.
The total slashed amount of a validator in a slot = collateral per slot set by the validator * total gas limit of the missing preconf bundles / block gas limit
Default Pricing Settings for Validators
The Proposer must decide to sell either the Whole Block, Inclusion Preconfs or mix of Inclusion and Execution Preconfs in the future. The assumption is that Proposers will not take an active or dynamic approach to selling block space products however - and they will prefer a default setting which will automatically seek to maximize validator fees.
Default 1: As the Whole block is worth strictly more than any mix of the Inclusion and Execution Preconfs - the risk-neutral fee maximisation option is to sell the Whole Block provided there is sufficient information to price the block accordingly.
Learn more about the Flow in the Architecture section
Last updated