Clearing Expired Participation Keys

[rotemh]

Problem

Currently, if an account marks itself online but the last round has passed, it counts towards the total online stake but the account can't vote. This is considered to be malicious behavior by the protocol and can undermine the protocol's security.

Solution

Design document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p5gKHxRpE8Snijyz6Zeo29MOd2WJLiyS6EBDCkFqdJw/edit

Dependencies

No dependencies.

Urgency

See problem

[tsachizehub]

This issue will be scheduled for the sprint starting on Aug 27

[tolikzinovyev]

Could the protocol make them offline automatically?

[rotemh]

Could the protocol make them offline automatically?

Absolutely and that's the second step in the issue. But auto-removal requires a more complex solution and we need something sooner than later so we broke it into two steps.

[yaovi-a]

Hey team! Please add your planning poker estimate with ZenHub @nicholasguoalgorand @tsachizehub @winder @algobolson

[brianolson]

Wild thought: make it a bounty to incentivize people. Take from the account being offlined and Sender gets 10*MinFee and gets their Fee (up to 10*MinFee) covered.

[barnjamin]

if anyone can create this condition it sounds like potential for a "perverse incentive" if they're rewarded for taking accounts offline

[brianolson]

@barnjamin not a problem. Someone registers a valid participation key for round 100,000 to 300,000. I can't file the un-register txn until round 300,001. Preferrably they register a new key valid for another bunch of rounds sometime around round 280,000, but if they forget or have a tech glitch we need to clean them up.

[jannotti]

It seems like this becomes a form of MEV (Miner Extractable Value) for better or worse. The block proposer for the first round that can take someone offline would want to do that himself, rather than pack any txn offered by a random account.

…

On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 10:18 AM Brian Olson ***@***.***> wrote: @barnjamin <https://github.com/barnjamin> not a problem. Someone registers a valid participation key for round 100,000 to 300,000. I can't file the un-register txn until round 300,001. Preferrably they register a new key valid for 300,000-to-future sometime around round 280,000, but if they forget or have a tech glitch we need to clean them up. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2738 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AADL7T45GDAQRVRQHOFHMMTT66NC7ANCNFSM5CCF3I6A> .

[barnjamin]

Someone registers a valid participation key for round 100,000 to 300,000

I may still be misunderstanding but when I register I can set the valid rounds to whatever I want right? If I choose a small range like 4 rounds, then submit a txn from another account to take the expired participating one offline and get enough of a reward it may be a profitable strategy. If there is a high minimum number of rounds or only the txn fee was covered it wouldn't be worth it to game