[spywaregorilla]

Again, no, not the people putting up the stake.

I am asking about the people with the power to declare that people who put up the stake were dishonest in their validations.

[drcode]

There is no such a power, slashing is 100% decentralized.

The key innovation in modern POS systems was figuring out how to do this, it is a solved problem.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

The code - not the people. Trust but verify - just like all other FOSS.

[spywaregorilla]

The people who are running the slasher nodes

[drcode]

If I understand what you mean by "slasher nodes" (there is no such term in reality): Anybody can run a node that checks for conflicting validation messages and get a small reward by doing so. There is zero stake required to do this. It is not some power conferred to "vitalik and his friends"