Anza proposes to implement a penalty mechanism in the Solana network and destroy part of the pledged tokens of the punished validators.

PANews reported on December 19 that according to Blockworks reports, Anza, the Solana developer store that was earlier spun off from Solana Labs, put forward two proposals to consider implementing a punishment mechanism (slashing) in the network. It’s worth noting that Solana has never enabled a penalty mechanism, and if Solana implemented a penalty mechanism, it would have a way to punish validators that slow down the network – but this would also introduce an element of risk for SOL stakers.

Currently, the proposed penalty mechanism program only penalizes validators for so-called “duplicate blocks”, where the same block is created twice. Anza has yet to decide on the specific economic details of the penalty mechanism, but the authors of SIMD recommend burning (or functionally invalidating) the staked tokens that are penalized. Anza's Ashwin Sekar also proposed a parabolic penalty curve: if 5% of the validator's pledged tokens violate the rules, 1% of its pledged tokens will be destroyed; and if 33% of the pledged tokens violate, all the pledged tokens will be destroyed All will be punished. Sekar explained during a validator discussion that Ethereum’s penalty curve is linear. Sekar also said that the penalty proposal is still in its early stages and such an update would not be rolled out until late summer of 2025 at the earliest.

Anza’s proposal appears to have received early and widespread approval from the Solana technology community. But enabling the penalty mechanism will add a risk factor for Solana stakers, and if their delegated validators’ staked tokens are suddenly destroyed, their rewards will be suddenly reduced. This risk also extends to re-staking protocols, as some have warned about the risk of “penalty cascades” on Ethereum re-staking platform EigenLayer.