If your validator has gone offline, or if you’re concerned about Cosmos slashing this article is for you.
Quite a few validators have been jailed recently. Even the Binance node has been jailed twice!
Many delegators have posted looking for help. If you need to know how to redelegate ATOM from your jailed validator, you’re in luck! And, it’s simpler than you think.
Cosmos Slashing
Validators are jailed for having too much downtime, or for double signing blocks.
Most ATOM validators host their nodes in data centers. Downtime can happen because the data center had an outage, or because the validator failed to make a critical network update.
Validators that miss 10,000 or more blocks are jailed and slashed for downtime. For this offense, the Cosmos slashing penalty is just a slap on the wrist of 0.01%. That means you lose 0.01% of your tokens that are staked with the jailed validator.
The slashing penalty for double signing blocks is 5%. It’s a more serious offense and so the penalty is larger.
Double signing blocks generally occurs for two reasons:
- The validator runs multiple nodes on the same blockchain and they interfered with each other.
- The validator is dishonest and tried to steal tokens.
These are just the risks of staking tokens. That’s why it’s important to stake with the best validators. Hopefully, your jailed validator was only slashed for downtime and your loss is minimal.
How to redelegate from your jailed validator
- Click the “Stake” button in Keplr or your wallet. A new tab or window will open up in your browser.
- Then click “Manage–>” next to your current jailed validator. A pop up box opens and “Redelegate” is the second option.
- Click “Redelegate.”
- A pop up appears and says “Redelegate to.” Type Blocks United into the search box or scroll down the list to find us.
- Click “Next”
- Click “MAX” when selecting how many tokens to redelegate, so none are left on the jailed node.
- Click “Redelegate”
- A pop up then appears that lets you choose low, medium, or high gas. That’s the cost for the transaction. You’ll notice a small option at the bottom right called, “Set Gas.”
- Click “Set Gas” and type in a minimum of 4500000, which is like $2 so don’t freak out.
- Then complete the transaction.
Congratulations! Within a few seconds your tokens should be staked with us at Blocks United. Please know that you can only redelegate ATOM tokens once in 21 days.
Hopefully you now have a better understanding of Cosmos slashing penalties and how to redelegate ATOM.
Thanks for staking with us!
