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+# Staking Tombstone
+
+## Abstract
+
+In the current implementation of the `slashing` module, when the consensus engine
+informs the state machine of a validator's consensus fault, the validator is
+partially slashed, and put into a "jail period", a period of time in which they
+are not allowed to rejoin the validator set. However, because of the nature of
+consensus faults and ABCI, there can be a delay between an infraction occurring,
+and evidence of the infraction reaching the state machine (this is one of the
+primary reasons for the existence of the unbonding period).
+
+> Note: The tombstone concept, only applies to faults that have a delay between
+the infraction occurring and evidence reaching the state machine. For example,
+evidence of a validator double signing may take a while to reach the state machine
+due to unpredictable evidence gossip layer delays and the ability of validators to
+selectively reveal double-signatures (e.g. to infrequently-online light clients).
+Liveness slashing, on the other hand, is detected immediately as soon as the
+infraction occurs, and therefore no slashing period is needed. A validator is
+immediately put into jail period, and they cannot commit another liveness fault
+until they unjail. In the future, there may be other types of byzantine faults
+that have delays (for example, submitting evidence of an invalid proposal as a transaction).
+When implemented, it will have to be decided whether these future types of
+byzantine faults will result in a tombstoning (and if not, the slash amounts
+will not be capped by a slashing period).
+
+In the current system design, once a validator is put in the jail for a consensus
+fault, after the `JailPeriod` they are allowed to send a transaction to `unjail`
+themselves, and thus rejoin the validator set.
+
+One of the "design desires" of the `slashing` module is that if multiple
+infractions occur before evidence is executed (and a validator is put in jail),
+they should only be punished for single worst infraction, but not cumulatively.
+For example, if the sequence of events is:
+
+1. Validator A commits Infraction 1 (worth 30% slash)
+2. Validator A commits Infraction 2 (worth 40% slash)
+3. Validator A commits Infraction 3 (worth 35% slash)
+4. Evidence for Infraction 1 reaches state machine (and validator is put in jail)
+5. Evidence for Infraction 2 reaches state machine
+6. Evidence for Infraction 3 reaches state machine
+
+Only Infraction 2 should have its slash take effect, as it is the highest. This
+is done, so that in the case of the compromise of a validator's consensus key,
+they will only be punished once, even if the hacker double-signs many blocks.
+Because, the unjailing has to be done with the validator's operator key, they
+have a chance to re-secure their consensus key, and then signal that they are
+ready using their operator key. We call this period during which we track only
+the max infraction, the "slashing period".
+
+Once, a validator rejoins by unjailing themselves, we begin a new slashing period;
+if they commit a new infraction after unjailing, it gets slashed cumulatively on
+top of the worst infraction from the previous slashing period.
+
+However, while infractions are grouped based off of the slashing periods, because
+evidence can be submitted up to an `unbondingPeriod` after the infraction, we
+still have to allow for evidence to be submitted for previous slashing periods.
+For example, if the sequence of events is:
+
+1. Validator A commits Infraction 1 (worth 30% slash)
+2. Validator A commits Infraction 2 (worth 40% slash)
+3. Evidence for Infraction 1 reaches state machine (and Validator A is put in jail)
+4. Validator A unjails
+
+We are now in a new slashing period, however we still have to keep the door open
+for the previous infraction, as the evidence for Infraction 2 may still come in.
+As the number of slashing periods increase, it creates more complexity as we have
+to keep track of the highest infraction amount for every single slashing period.
+
+> Note: Currently, according to the `slashing` module spec, a new slashing period
+is created every time a validator is unbonded then rebonded. This should probably
+be changed to jailed/unjailed. See issue [#3205](https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/issues/3205)
+for further details. For the remainder of this, I will assume that we only start
+a new slashing period when a validator gets unjailed.
+
+The maximum number of slashing periods is the `len(UnbondingPeriod) / len(JailPeriod)`.
+The current defaults in Gaia for the `UnbondingPeriod` and `JailPeriod` are 3 weeks
+and 2 days, respectively. This means there could potentially be up to 11 slashing
+periods concurrently being tracked per validator. If we set the `JailPeriod >= UnbondingPeriod`,
+we only have to track 1 slashing period (i.e not have to track slashing periods).
+
+Currently, in the jail period implementation, once a validator unjails, all of
+their delegators who are delegated to them (haven't unbonded / redelegated away),
+stay with them.  Given that consensus safety faults are so egregious
+(way more so than liveness faults), it is probably prudent to have delegators not
+"auto-rebond" to the validator. Thus, we propose setting the "jail time" for a
+validator who commits a consensus safety fault, to `infinite` (i.e. a tombstone state).
+This essentially kicks the validator out of the validator set and does not allow
+them to re-enter the validator set. All of their delegators (including the operator themselves)
+have to either unbond or redelegate away. The validator operator can create a new
+validator if they would like, with a new operator key and consensus key, but they
+have to "re-earn" their delegations back.  To put the validator in the tombstone
+state, we set `DoubleSignJailEndTime` to `time.Unix(253402300800)`, the maximum
+time supported by Amino.
+
+Implementing the tombstone system and getting rid of the slashing period tracking
+will make the `slashing` module way simpler, especially because we can remove all
+of the hooks defined in the `slashing` module consumed by the `staking` module
+(the `slashing` module still consumes hooks defined in `staking`).
+
+### Single slashing amount
+
+Another optimization that can be made is that if we assume that all ABCI faults
+for Tendermint consensus are slashed at the same level, we don't have to keep
+track of "max slash".  Once an ABCI fault happens, we don't have to worry about
+comparing potential future ones to find the max.
+
+Currently the only Tendermint ABCI fault is:
+
+- Unjustified precommits (double signs)
+
+It is currently planned to include the following fault in the near future:
+
+- Signing a precommit when you're in unbonding phase (needed to make light client bisection safe)
+
+Given that these faults are both attributable byzantine faults, we will likely
+want to slash them equally, and thus we can enact the above change.
+
+> Note: This change may make sense for current Tendermint consensus, but maybe
+not for a different consensus algorithm or future versions of Tendermint that
+may want to punish at different levels (for example, partial slashing).