This document provides a recommendation by the Arbitration Council on how long the transition period for the Horizon upgrade needs to be. The suggestion is a duration of 42 epochs (28 + 14) for the Graph Horizon upgrade.
In the current system an indexer can close an allocation, immediately unstake and withdraw their stake 28 epochs later (due to the thawing period). So if we wanted to provide “equal dispute opportunities” for allocated stake we would have to ensure that stake belonging to legacy allocations remains slashable (i.e cannot be withdrawn) for 28 epochs after the last allocation is closed. This gives us a suggested transition period of 56 epochs:
As mentioned before, during the transition period indexers might be subject to both thawings if they join the Subgraph Service and then want to exit the protocol. For reference, here is an example of what this would look like:
On one hand, we want a transition period of at least 56 (28 + 28) epochs to provide “equal dispute opportunities”, on the other hand the painful double thawing user experience and the negative impact of capital sitting idle for 56 days suggest the smaller the transition period the better.
The Arbitration Council suggests a transition period of 28 + 14 epochs. This would be 14 epochs less than the current dispute window, potentially leaving only 14 epochs to uncover and settle disputes (in the worst case scenario where a legacy allocation is closed on epoch 28 of the transition period). The Arbitration team is committed to help during this transition by ensuring during those 14 epochs disputes are resolved in a timely manner.