Updated on September 13, 2021

Slashing protection

Teku implements slashing protection to prevent validators from signing incorrect blocks or attestations.

You can import and export the slashing-protection file when migrating validator keys between validator clients. Teku supports the validator client interchange format when importing or exporting the slashing-protection file.

Note

If using an external signer that implements its own slashing protection (for example Web3Signer), then you can disable Teku’s built-in slashing protection using the --validators-external-signer-slashing-protection-enabled command line option.

Importing a slashing-protection file

When importing the slashing-protection file, Teku imports the file to the <data-path>/validators/slashprotection/ directory in the format <validator-pubkey>.yml (with no 0x prefix).

Example

teku slashing-protection import --data-path=/home/me/me_node --from=/home/slash/slashing-interchange-format.json

In the command line:

• --data-path specifies the location of the Teku data directory.
• --from specifies the location of the slashing-protection file.

In this example, Teku imports the file to the /home/me/me_node/data/validators/slashprotection/ directory.

Exporting a slashing-protection file

Export the slashing-protection file when migrating a validator to a different Teku, or non-Teku node.

Example

teku slashing-protection export --data-path=/home/me/me_node --to=/home/slash/slashing-interchange-format-minimal.json

In the command line:

• --data-path specifies the location of the Teku data directory.
• --to specifies the file to export the slashing-protection data to.

You can now import the slashing-protection file in a Teku, or non-Teku node.