What Is the Difference between ‘Slashing’ and ‘Inactivity Leak’?

Slashing is a severe, immediate penalty that destroys a large portion of a validator's stake for explicitly malicious behavior like double-signing. An inactivity leak is a gradual, continuous reduction of a validator's stake if they are offline and fail to attest to the chain.

The leak is a less severe, non-malicious penalty to incentivize uptime.