Slashing Overview

Audius relies on staking mechanisms to enforce proper behavior within the parameters of the protocol, but because Audius is not its own blockchain, the typical slashing rules (eg. double-signed blocks) applied to other staking-based protocols do not apply here.

However, service providers do have some subjective rules to follow, which over time and with community guidance will be tightened into formal / objective rules. By registering a content node or discovery node in Audius, you agree to the following conditions:

• to maintain the minimum machine specifications required for your respective node type
• to keep your service alive and functional (passing health check), with exceptions made for bugs in first-party service implementations. (Occasional brief downtime is acceptable, but prolonged downtime will cause risk of slashing. Important thing here is to be communicative with community)
• to operate the first-party service provider code without modification. If operating out of the spec of how the first-party Audius implementation of a service provider for your service's advertised version functions, this is grounds for a slashing action.
• to update your node software to the current version in a timely fashion, especially when fixing critical issues.

Slashed funds, before arbitration has launched, are burned. Slashing decisions are determined by stake-weighted vote of existing service providers. Due to governance involvement in slashing, slashing actions will only be taken by the network if all other options (eg. communicating with node operator to help rectify issue) have been exhausted.