What is Slashing?

All EVM stake pools (such as Avalanche and Meld) are subject to slashing. That means if the SPO does not comply with the uptime, software maintenance and Avalanche/Meld policies, then all of the SPO's pledged tokens as well as all or some of the staked tokens are at risk of getting confiscated.

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Downtime Warnings

Consistent node uptime is crucial for network stability and performance. The SPO will receive a warning under the following node outage conditions:​

• The node is down for 24 continuous hours.

• The node uptime falls below 98% (or 43 hours and 30 minutes) over the rolling 18 epochs (90 days).

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Risks to SPOs

• If SPO is not in compliance with Meld policies, it will be warned 3 times to remedy the compliance violation.

• If SPO remedies the warning , no slashing will occur and everything will continue as normal.

• If warnings are not addressed in a timely fashion after the 3rd warning, then the following could happen:

  • The pool operator could potentially lose all its pledged AVAX (a minimum pledge requirement of 2000 AVAX) if Avalanches requirements are not met.

  • The SPO is slashed. The pool operator loses all its pledged MELD regardless of the amount pledged.

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Risks to Delegators (you)

If the SPO has pledged 2+ million MELD to the node, then as a delegator you will not get slashed at any time. The table below shows the slashing percentages for the delegators if the SPO has pledged less than 2 million MELD. Please keep in mind that at anytime before and while the SPO is under warning(s), the delegators are free to change their staking NFT to a different pool to protect their delegated MELD against slashing. Once the SPO is slashed, the delegators remaining in the pool are at risk of losing their staked MELD according to the following table:

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