How Does the "Nothing-at-Stake" Problem Relate to PoS and How Is It Mitigated? ▴ Learn

How Does the “Nothing-at-Stake” Problem Relate to PoS and How Is It Mitigated?

The "nothing-at-stake" problem is a historical concern in PoS where validators have no financial incentive to choose only one chain during a fork. Since it costs them nothing to validate on multiple chains, they might do so, hindering consensus.

Ethereum mitigates this by penalizing (slashing) validators who attest to multiple conflicting blocks. This creates a financial cost for dishonest behavior.

This mechanism ensures validators commit to a single chain.

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