What Is ‘Slashing’ in PoS and How Does It Act as a Security Mechanism?

Slashing is a punitive mechanism in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) systems where a validator's staked cryptocurrency is partially or fully destroyed (burned) as a penalty for malicious or dishonest behavior, such as double-signing blocks or being offline for too long. It acts as a strong economic deterrent, raising the capital cost of an attack and aligning the validator's incentives with the network's security.