keep-network
Explore signing bond leverage in v2
If Deposits have enough signers backing them, and they don't have any signer pairs shared between them, we should be able to lower the bond requirements. Allowing signers to commit less bonded collateral relative to the tBTC market cap will increase their return on capital.
How much lower can we go? How will this impact undercollateralized Deposit signers- can we avoid chain liquidations? How large to signer sets need to be to make this work?
Leverage is tricky. If we pursue this, it counters potential malicious signing fine but lowers the exchange rate delta the system can tolerate, since all signing bonds move together.
Pursuing a leveraged bonding strategy might still work if
- The work token gets involved
- We make a reason for signers to over-bond
- We collect slashed ETH across the system over time and use that to lower simultaneous bonding requirements.
Another option would be enabling leverage across other work in the network.
Eg, other pegged tokens might not move with BTC and ETH, offering an opportunity for safer ETH leverage, and other keep types don't need any guarantees on exchange rate (eg standard ECDSA keeps)
The safest approach thus far that can approach 1X collateralization (just the BTC) can be achieved by #118 and #117. Leverage research is still valuable to drive capital efficiency, but the fear of only being able to operate under 2.5X total system collateral appears to be unfounded (we're looking at ~1.4X using those safer methods)
Are you still pursuing this option? It's not exactly clear to me how non-overlapping sets of signers between 2 deposits allow improvements on the capital efficiency of the system.
The work token gets involved
You could use the work token, is it inflationary similar to Maker for edge-cases? Not sure if you want to repurpose it now though.
We make a reason for signers to over-bond
Isn't that already the case? 150% ETH in btc value
We collect slashed ETH across the system over time and use that to lower simultaneous bonding requirements.
So this might work, but if the system is soundly designed, ETH should never be slashed as signers will never try to commit fraud. Agreed that the slashed ETH could be sent to a pool, and each new deposit would get a collateral-discount via that pool.
Note that if the pool runs out, Signers that pay the full collateral amount are in an unfair position vs the Signers that got some of their collateral requirements compensated by the pool.
It's almost as if it incentivizes Signers to get slashed now, to get more relaxed collateral requirements for their next backing of a deposit
