The protocol gives incentives for correct participation and costs for failures.
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A cooperative system can reward completed duties and impose different consequences for absence and conflicting behavior.
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Receive, check and share across independent nodesStep 1 / 4
A node receives a proposed transaction or block-related message. Receipt is not the same as accepting its claims.
A node receives a proposed transaction or block-related message. Receipt is not the same as accepting its claims.The node checks the relevant authorization and protocol rules. Popularity does not make an invalid state transition valid.Valid candidate data can propagate to peers. Connections and timing differ, so there is no perfect simultaneous worldwide view.Peers validate under the same protocol rules. This illustration is about verification and propagation, not a complete proof-of-stake consensus algorithm.
Animated local teaching model. No wallet, RPC or live blockchain data. Some labels and hashes are abbreviated for readability.
Rewards depend on duties and rules
Validator participation can earn protocol rewards according to stake, assignments and performance under the active mechanism. It is not a guaranteed fixed return quoted by a learning diagram.
Missed duties can have costs
Being offline or failing to participate correctly can incur penalties or missed rewards. The outcome depends on the type of duty and broader network conditions.
Slashing is a distinct category
Specific provably conflicting actions can trigger slashing, which has more severe consequences under the protocol. Calling every small inactivity penalty slashing hides this important distinction.
Operations carry assumptions
Running validator infrastructure involves keys, uptime and software configuration. Learning the mechanism here does not require staking or buying anything. Inspect the official current rules before relying on numerical reward claims.
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Is every missed reward necessarily a slashing event?
Ordinary participation penalties and slashable behavior are different categories.