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Version: v4 (next)

Network Governance Slashing

Slashing a Corporation's trust deposit is a network-level penalty, reserved for rare cases where fraud or a breach of the VPR governance framework is severe enough that ecosystem-level sanctions are insufficient.

Slashing operates at two independent levels (see the Slash section in Learn):

  • Network-level — the VPR governance authority slashes a Corporation's trust deposit directly. This is the td slash-trust-deposit message documented on this page. It is governance-only.
  • Ecosystem-level — an ecosystem slashes the portion of a Corporation's deposit tied to a specific Participant entry, using pp slash-participant-td. See Slash a Participant.

A slashed Corporation MUST repay the slashed amount to return to good standing. While a slashed deposit is outstanding, all of the Corporation's Participant entries are considered non-trustable.

Slash Trust Deposit (Governance)​

td slash-trust-deposit can only be executed by the governance module — the message signer is authority (the x/gov module account), so a normal key cannot sign it. It is submitted as a governance proposal wrapping /verana.td.v1.MsgSlashTrustDeposit (spec MOD-TD-MSG-5).

The message targets a Corporation by its numeric corporation_id (field 2, the old account-string corporation, is reserved — slashing is corporation-keyed in v4).

Direct CLI is governance-only

The binary exposes veranad tx td slash-trust-deposit --corporation-id <id> --deposit <amount> --reason <text>, but because the required signer is the gov module account, it must be routed through a gov submit-proposal. The flags map onto the proposal message fields shown below.

Environment Setup​

USER_ACC="my-user-account"       # Proposer / voter key
CORP_ID=6                        # Numeric corporation_id to slash
CHAIN_ID="vna-testnet-1"
NODE_RPC="https://rpc.testnet.verana.network"

Step 1: Get the Governance Authority Address​

GOV_AUTH=$(veranad q auth module-accounts --node $NODE_RPC --output json \
| jq -r '.accounts[] | select(.value.name=="gov") | .value.address')

Step 2: Build the Proposal JSON​

cat > slash_proposal.json <<JSON
{
  "messages": [
    {
      "@type": "/verana.td.v1.MsgSlashTrustDeposit",
      "authority": "${GOV_AUTH}",
      "corporation_id": "${CORP_ID}",
      "deposit": "1000000",
      "reason": "Verified fraudulent activity"
    }
  ],
  "metadata": "ipfs://CID",
  "deposit": "10000000uvna",
  "title": "Slash Trust Deposit for Fraudulent Activity",
  "summary": "Requests to slash 1,000,000 uvna from the trust deposit of corporation_id 6 due to verified fraudulent activity. The corporation must repay this amount before participating in the VPR again.",
  "expedited": false
}
JSON

Message fields (proto MsgSlashTrustDeposit):

FieldDescriptionMandatory
authorityGovernance module address (the message signer).yes
corporation_idNumeric id of the Corporation whose deposit is slashed.yes
depositAmount to slash, in uvna.yes
reasonHuman-readable reason for the slash (mandatory per spec MOD-TD-MSG-5-1).yes

Step 3: Submit the Proposal​

veranad tx gov submit-proposal slash_proposal.json \
  --from $USER_ACC --keyring-backend test --chain-id $CHAIN_ID \
  --fees 750000uvna --gas auto --node $NODE_RPC

Step 4: Track and Vote​

veranad q gov proposals --node $NODE_RPC
PROPOSAL_ID=1  # Replace with the actual proposal ID
veranad tx gov vote $PROPOSAL_ID yes \
  --from $USER_ACC --keyring-backend test --chain-id $CHAIN_ID \
  --fees 650000uvna --gas auto --node $NODE_RPC

Vote options: yes, no, no_with_veto, abstain.

Step 5: Verify the Slash​

After the proposal passes and is executed, inspect the Corporation's trust deposit:

veranad q td get-trust-deposit $CORP_ID --node $NODE_RPC --output json

The response will show:

  • slashed_deposit — increased by the slashed amount;
  • slash_count — incremented by 1;
  • last_slashed — updated with the slash timestamp.

Repay a Slashed Trust Deposit​

A network-slashed Corporation restores good standing by repaying the outstanding slashed amount with td repay-slashed-td. This is a delegable operation executed by an authorized operator on behalf of the Corporation.

See Repay a Slashed Trust Deposit on the Trust Deposit Operations page for the full command, prerequisites, and exact-amount rule.

Ecosystem-Level Slashing (Participants)​

For slashing tied to a Corporation's activity within a specific ecosystem, the ecosystem's authority uses the Participant module rather than governance:

  • veranad tx pp slash-participant-td [id] [amount] [reason] — slash the trust deposit backing a Participant entry (delegable; see Slash a Participant).
  • veranad tx pp repay-participant-slashed-td [id] --corporation [corporation] — repay it (see Repay a Slashed Participant Deposit).

An ecosystem can only slash the portion of a Corporation's deposit that corresponds to activity within that ecosystem.

See also​