As staking becomes increasingly popular among crypto investors, essential concepts are emerging that anyone looking to stake digital assets for passive income should understand. One of the most important — yet least discussed — is slashing. Slashing can directly affect the funds of an uninformed investor, but can also be completely avoided when using a professional staking infrastructure. In this article, we explain what slashing is, how it works, when it happens, and most importantly, how to protect yourself.
What is slashing in staking?
Slashing is a penalty mechanism implemented in blockchain networks that use Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms. This mechanism is designed to discourage malicious behavior or negligence by validators. When a validator acts against the protocol rules or remains inactive for too long, the protocol can penalize that validator along with the delegators who have staked their tokens with them.
The penalty usually consists of losing a percentage of the staked tokens. The percentage can vary from one network to another, but the effect is the same: a decrease in the delegator’s portfolio value, even if they did nothing wrong.
Why does slashing occur?
Slashing typically happens in two main cases:
- Downtime: When the validator is repeatedly offline or during critical periods, it misses the opportunity to participate in block validation and compromises network security.
- Malicious behavior includes signing conflicting blocks, participating in double-spend attacks, or other protocol violations.
PoS networks rely on honest behavior, and slashing is an effective way to enforce accountability. Without this mechanism, careless or unethical validators could undermine the entire network.
What impact does slashing have on you as a delegator?
Slashing doesn’t just affect the validator. When a validator is penalized, their delegators also lose a proportional share of the staked tokens. In other words, you can suffer real losses even if you didn’t make any mistakes.
Therefore, choosing the right validator is one of the most important decisions you’ll make when staking. It’s not just about fees or yield — it’s about the safety of your capital.
How can you avoid slashing?
The most effective way to avoid losses due to slashing is to delegate your funds to a validator with a strong track record, near-perfect uptime, and stable technical infrastructure. Professional validators implement advanced monitoring systems, redundancy, and security mechanisms to ensure their nodes remain online and protocol-compliant.
It’s important to check the validator’s public statistics: slashing history, uptime, participation in major networks (like Ethereum or Cosmos), and the infrastructure they use.
What makes a professional validator different?
Serious validators treat their relationship with delegators responsibly. They don’t just aim to avoid penalties — they invest continuously in autonomous infrastructure, use state-of-the-art equipment, and maintain high uptime. Moreover, a professional validator offers ongoing communication and technical support.
Technologies such as SSV (Secret Shared Validators) are also a clear sign that a validator prioritizes security. These allow the distribution of signing keys across multiple nodes, drastically reducing the risk of slashing due to technical failures.
01NODE: Responsibility, performance, and delegator protection
We at 01NODE take our responsibility to validate blockchain networks very seriously. Out of the hundreds of thousands of blocks we’ve validated over the years, we’ve experienced only one slashing incident — caused by a minor technical error — and it has never happened again.
But what matters most is how we responded: we fully reimbursed, from our funds, all tokens lost by our delegators, demonstrating our firm commitment to protecting the investments of those who trusted us.
With our infrastructure, three data centers (one operated internally), over 99.99% uptime, and active validation on more than 30 networks, 01NODE is the partner you can rely on for safe and high-performance staking.