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Robust Restaking Networks

Authors Naveen Durvasula , Tim Roughgarden

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  • Networks → Network economics
Keywords
  • Proof of stake
  • Restaking
  • Staking Risks

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Abstract

We study the risks of validator reuse across multiple services in a restaking protocol. We characterize the robust security of a restaking network as a function of the buffer between the costs and profits from attacks. For example, our results imply that if attack costs always exceed attack profits by 10%, then a sudden loss of .1% of the overall stake (e.g., due to a software error) cannot result in the ultimate loss of more than 1.1% of the overall stake. We also provide local analogs of these overcollateralization conditions and robust security guarantees that apply specifically for a target service or coalition of services. All of our bounds on worst-case stake loss are the best possible. Finally, we bound the maximum-possible length of a cascade of attacks.
Our results suggest measures of robustness that could be exposed to the participants in a restaking protocol. We also suggest polynomial-time computable sufficient conditions that can proxy for these measures.

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Naveen Durvasula and Tim Roughgarden. Robust Restaking Networks. In 16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 325, pp. 48:1-48:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.48

Author Details

Naveen Durvasula
  • Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Tim Roughgarden
  • a16zcrypto, New York, NY, USA
  • Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Funding

This research was supported in part by NSF awards CCF-2006737 and CNS-2212745, and research awards from the Briger Family Digital Finance Lab and the Center for Digital Finance and Technologies.

Acknowledgements

We thank Tarun Chitra, Soubhik Deb, Sreeram Kannan, Mike Neuder, and Mallesh Pai for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We thank Soubhik and Sreeram in particular for emphasizing the importance of local guarantees.

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