EIGEN: Intersubjective Cohesion vs Intersubjective Fracture

In the recently published EIGEN: The Universal Intersubjective Work Token whitepaper, EigenLayer introduced three distinct methods on how faults can be attributed to a malicious party: objectively attributable faults, intersubjectively attributable faults, and non-attributable faults.

In this piece, we'll be diving into the second fault type and lay out how consensus on what constitutes such a fault can be reached within a set of observers and/or validators.

Traditionally, blockchains like Ethereum rely on objective verification methods where faults can be cryptographically proven and validated on-chain and then slashed. However, many subjective types of digital tasks do not fit neatly into this objective framework and instead require human input to determine correctness.

This is where EIGEN token, as a universal intersubjective work token, comes in to introduce intersubjective faults and slashing through forking.

Intersubjectively Attributable Faults require a broad-based consensus agreement among active observers of the system toward whether a fault is valid, in situations where the correctness of a task cannot be or is not easily determined purely through algorithmic or cryptographic means. For instance, verifying the accuracy of a price reported by an oracle depends on collective agreement, as it may not be immediately and objectively verifiable.

Two important concepts that will become most important to consider when discussing agreements on social consensus for intersubjective faults on EigenLayer are:

All honest members participating in consensus-making should achieve a collective agreement (cohesion) toward which is the correct fork of bEIGEN, after the challenge is initiated.

If cohesion is not achieved, a fracture in consensus occurs. Honest nodes disagree on whether the fault has happened and whether it can be properly attributed, which can happen due to questionable information sources, complexity in determining an asset's price/liquidity, or confusing AVS requirements for what constitutes a fault in the specific scenario at hand.

If cohesion toward an intersubjective misbehavior is achieved, the malicious operator(s) portion of the bEIGEN1 token will be burned, and the remaining bEIGEN1 tokens belonging to the compliant and honest operators will be forked into bEIGEN2, resulting in the loss of access to the former and the inability to redeem the latter for the malicious nodes. Trustfulness is enforced through forking and loss of stake.

EIGEN's mechanism thus ensures that the intersubjective consensus and the forking process do not overload Ethereum’s social consensus. Instead, it isolates these processes within the EIGEN token framework, maintaining the integrity of the Ethereum network​.

To mitigate fracture from occurring and incentivize and increase the probability of cohesion, AVSs should:

1. Incentivize and properly reward a large enough pool of users to adopt robust light-node infrastructure, closely observe validators, and ensure they are adequately performing their tasks under the AVS conditions set to be intersubjectively verifiable through consensus,

2. Set-up comprehensible rules for potential fault observations, accounting for flaws in the consensus process,

3. Pre-agree on information sources that should be used and routinely monitored by light nodes, assuring possible errors are widely observed and thus happen less often.

In sum, intersubjective slashing (accurately done) brings additional cryptoeconomic security to subjective disputes that would be difficult to objectively compute or program into smart contracts, paving the way for building robust AVSs against these kinds of faults.

Read more at https://docs.eigenlayer.xyz/eigenlayer/overview/whitepaper.

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