[drog]

I know about that but thanks for your comment - I’ll clarify what I mean.

It’s just the specifics of how this works - slashing is part of the protocol in the sense that I described: when you are chosen to create a new block and you have proof that someone violated the rules then you include this proof in your proposed block and update balance. Any validator can do it including the smallest of home stakers.

More details here. https://github.com/ethereum/annotated-spec/blob/master/phase...

Here we have slashing fields in the block body where you insert your proofs of slashable offense. There are functions with a “slash” in the name that describes precise state transition.

The hard part of slashing is finding these proofs because you have to do more work than necessary to detect slashing and produce proofs - that’s what this software does. It’s more expensive to run a slasher but you need only one and it does not matter who runs it, anyone can run it. The link that you sent says that this slasher broadcasts proofs by default - that way anyone can include it.

[koheripbal]

Slashing is only detrimental to the bad actor if the fork fails. If the fork succeeds, then there is no penalty for a malicious fork.

This is why they are limiting the number of validators.

[DennisP]

On either fork, anyone can submit proof of your equivocation and get you slashed.

There are currently over 400,000 full-fledged validators. The maximum supported number of validators is the number of ETH divided by 32, or about 3.75 million. Scaling is the reason the limit wasn't made even higher, by lowering the ETH per validator.