<aside> ⚛️ Hi! We at Informal Systems are so grateful to have your validator join this private Interchain Security testnet. In the coming months, we will be opening up testnets to the larger Cosmos Hub validator set. For now, we are excited to work with a select group of well-established Cosmos Hub validators where we can learn about the Cross Chain Validation (CCV) protocol together and have the freedom to work together quickly and efficiently!

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Objectives

Interchain Security is a feature which will allow the Cosmos Hub to share security with other blockchains. On a technical level, this means that the Cosmos Hub validator set will gain the ability to validate other blockchains alongside the Cosmos Hub. These blockchains are called “consumer chains”, and will be secured by the Cosmos Hub’s billions of dollars of staked ATOMs.

In August, we published v0.1 pre-release of Interchain Security, which, at a high-level, is an implementation of the Interchain Security protocol that is set to go live in January 2023. This protocol implements: validator set change packets and confirmations; slashing packets; distribution packets; Cosmos-SDK modifications. You can check out the full specification here.

For this test-net, we will work together to test out features of the protocol that validators will be running. These actions include:

🏁 Startup

• Participants including Validators (’Participants’) and Informal Systems (as the ‘Provider’) will work together to explore starting a Provider and Consumer Chain
• Staking tokens will be distributed to Validators (10 000) and the Coordinator will self bond.

✨ Second Consumer Chain is created

• We will go through the motions of starting up another Consumer Chain that will be proposed for acceptance by governance. Voting period will be 3 day and Validators will vote to accept the Consumer Chain
• Consumer chain will be started 1 day after voting ends (Day 4)
  • Actions:
    • Coordinator and Participants check the chain is up. Send tokens. See voting power change
    • Jailed validators are un-jailed

🔌 Power Changes

• We will go through the process of delegating, un-delegating and re-delegating to validators repeatedly to change ranking and power, including taking validators off the active set!
• Validators un-self bond to test validator un-bonding code
  • Actions:
    • Check that validator is removed on consumer chain

⏳ Cosmos SDK Staking

• Here, a new Consumer Chain is set up with longer CCV un-bonding period than the Provider chain to test out what happens in this scenario.
  • Actions:
    • Test what happens when validators that un-delegate their tokens on the Provider allow the Provider un-bonding period to pass

🔪 Slashing

• In this phase, we will explore a number of different slashing scenarios and what the effect is on Validators:
  • A Validator goes down for long enough on the consumer chain to trigger downtime!
  • A Validator goes down on multiple consumer chains..
  • A Validator double signs a block on the Consumer Chain…

💰 Distribution

• We will check that the Provider is rewarder in the tokens of the Consumer Chain