Reporter
What is a Reporter?
In the Proof of Neutrality (PoN) relay, a reporter plays a critical role in maintaining the integrity and security of the protocol. The primary function of a reporter is to scrutinize the activities of proposers and builders, ensuring that they adhere to the rules and regulations of the network.
Through a process of consistent monitoring and validation, reporters act as watchdogs for the PoN Relay, providing an independent and impartial assessment of the actions of proposers and builders. In doing so, they help to ensure that the network remains secure and trustworthy, and that any wrongdoing is detected, reported, and met with consequences.
Reporters are incentivized with rewards for reporting wrongdoing, taking a portion of funds from the reported party and splitting it with the payout pool. By collecting these rewards, reporters stay motivated to remain vigilant and ensure the continued success of the PoN Relay.
How Does Reporting Work?
The PoN Relay and Adaptive PBS Smoothing Pool rely on reporters to ensure compliance with PBS rules. If a proposer misses a slot or fails to propose a committed block, participants in the PoN Relay also miss out on rewards. Reporters monitor for rule violations and report any misbehavior with builders and proposers. A builder can accrue debt and become non-operational until the debt is repaid, while a proposer will be in operation until it exits or gets kicked out.
The reporter of the PBS rule violation is rewarded with half of the reported penalty. The remaining half is distributed among the validators. Penalty rewards can be claimed after 100 blocks from the last report and come from the Payout Pool.
PBS Penalties
If a proposer is reported for violating PBS rules, the penalties are paid using funds from the proposer’s claimable rewards. If the penalty amount exceeds the available funds, future rewards will be allocated toward repaying the unpaid portion until it is fully repaid, then the proposer will resume accumulating rewards. Penalties can result in the proposer being removed from the network if reported two times, kicked off the beacon chain, slashed on the beacon chain, or if their effective balance goes below 32.
Builders must lock the minimal stake amount of funds in the builder registry contract to participate in the PBS-Smoothing pool and penalties for violating PBS rules are paid using these locked funds. Builders can be removed, penalized, but can rejoin the pool if they compensate for the damage by locking up more money to the builder registry contract.