Review Pool

The Review Pool operates as a cryptoeconomic security layer, where participants (reviewers) must stake capital to participate. This stake acts as a bond that can be slashed if they approve incorrect data or act maliciously. The system's security is directly proportional to the total value locked (TVL) in the pool, creating a financial disincentive for attacks. This model is a form of stake-for-security, common in Proof-of-Stake blockchains and oracle networks.

The design aligns incentives through a positive-sum game for honest actors and a negative-sum game for malicious ones.

• Honest Reviewers earn rewards (fees, inflation) for correct validation, making honesty the economically rational choice.
• Malicious Actors risk losing their entire stake through slashing, making attacks financially unsustainable.
• The Nash Equilibrium is achieved when all participants find it most profitable to follow the protocol rules. This is enforced by mechanisms like challenge periods and fraud proofs.

Slashing is the enforced loss of a reviewer's staked funds, triggered by provably malicious or negligent actions. Common slashing conditions include:

• Data Incorrectness: Approving a data submission that is objectively false or inconsistent.
• Censorship: Refusing to include valid transactions or data in a block/report.
• Liveness Failure: Going offline and failing to perform required duties.
• Double-Signing: Signing conflicting messages, often indicative of a fork attack. Penalties can be partial or total, and are often distributed to honest participants as a reward.

Despite staking, review pools must be designed to resist specific economic attacks:

• Bribery Attacks: An attacker bribes reviewers to approve bad data. This is mitigated if the cost of bribery exceeds the slashing penalty plus the honest reward.
• Stake Grinding: An attacker slowly accumulates stake to eventually control the pool. Mitigated by sybil resistance and progressive decentralization.
• Nothing-at-Stake: In fork scenarios, reviewers have incentive to validate all chains. Mitigated by slashing for equivocation.
• Collusion: A majority coalition acts maliciously. The defense is ensuring the cost to acquire a malicious majority of stake is prohibitively high.

The pool's parameters create a trade-off between liveness (the system always progresses) and safety (the system never makes a mistake).

• High Slashing Penalties prioritize safety but may discourage participation, harming liveness.
• Low Staking Requirements improve liveness (easier to join) but reduce the cost of attack, harming safety.
• Challenge Period Length: A longer period improves safety by allowing more time for fraud proofs, but delays finality, impacting liveness. Optimal parameters balance these based on the value secured.

A multi-signature wallet or decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) composed of trusted experts responsible for managing the Review Pool. Their core duties include:

• Approving or rejecting audit funding requests from projects.
• Releasing funds to auditors upon successful completion of a review.
• Setting policy for the pool, such as eligibility criteria and fee structures.
• Acting as a final arbiter in disputes between projects and auditors.

A platform that connects projects seeking audits with qualified security researchers. The Review Pool is often the financial backstop for this marketplace. Key functions include:

• Vetting and onboarding auditors based on reputation and skill.
• Facilitating the bidding process where auditors submit proposals for audit scopes and prices.
• Escrowing funds from the Review Pool to guarantee payment upon successful work.
• Providing a structured framework for the entire audit lifecycle.

A mathematical model that defines the relationship between the supply of a token and its price. In a Review Pool context, a bonding curve can be used to:

• Mint new pool tokens when users deposit funds, with the price increasing as the pool grows.
• Burn tokens when users withdraw funds, with the price decreasing.
• This creates a dynamic funding mechanism where early contributors are incentivized, and the cost of capital adjusts based on pool utilization.

The maximum financial amount the Review Pool will commit to a single audit or project. This is a critical risk management parameter. It ensures:

• Pool solvency by preventing a single large audit from draining the entire treasury.
• Fair allocation of resources across the ecosystem.
• Projects with larger codebases may need to secure additional funding or split their audit into multiple scopes to stay within the limit.

A complementary security program that offers monetary rewards for the discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in live production systems. It differs from a Review Pool:

• Timing: Bug bounties are continuous for deployed contracts, while audit pools fund pre-deployment reviews.
• Scope: Bounties are open-ended and reactive; audits are scoped and proactive.
• Cost Model: Bounties pay only for verified exploits; audit pools pay for time and expertise regardless of findings.

The act of locking up capital as collateral to participate in a network's security or governance. In a Review Pool ecosystem, staking can be used to:

• Underwrite risk: Stakers provide the capital for the pool and earn fees.
• Align incentives: Auditors may stake tokens to signal credibility and have "skin in the game."
• Govern the pool: Stakers often have voting rights on Security Council membership or pool parameters through a staking governance model.