17. Staking, Delegation & Slashing
17.1 Validator Records
types/account.rs and consensus/committee.rs represent validators with an address, signing key, finality key, VRF key, stake, commission field, activity state, jail state and slashing history. Node bootstrap code can register a validator for a local or testnet configuration. This is not evidence that a complete permissionless staking market is deployed.
17.2 Delegation and Rewards
The repository contains stake and commission fields, but the current stacc/validator_rewards.rs exposes a hookable inflation-based reward function rather than a complete delegation and reward-distribution protocol. Delegation semantics, unbonding, reward accounting, compounding, and treasury policy require a normative mainnet specification.
17.3 Slashing
consensus/slashing.rs defines evidence types for faults such as invalid blocks and equivocation, validation and deduplication paths, penalties, jailing, and reporter-reward configuration. Defaults are configurable implementation values. The whitepaper must not present fixed percentages, burn destinations, or downtime schedules as universal protocol rules until they are fixed in genesis and exercised in multi-validator tests.
17.4 Required Mainnet Specification
A production staking system must specify validator admission, minimum stake, delegation, commission bounds, activation and exit delays, reward funding, evidence expiry, appeal handling, jail recovery, slash destinations, and governance authority. Security claims are conditional on stake concentration and the configured quorum.