research(contracts): decentralising bond arbitration

[mfw78]

Problem

There is a need for some actors within the system to be bonded due to the risk they pose to the protocol. Currently, only solvers are bonded with the right of arbitration falling to CoW DAO. This process is not automated / permissionless, and represents an element of centralisation.

Acceptance criteria

• Data availability sufficient for administration of bonds to be permissionless, and incentivised.

Details

Caution: This issue is NOT about introducing automated on-chain slashing immediately / for Contracts V2.

In order to ensure that the bonds can be administered permissionlessly, there needs to be some mechanism in place, in contract, that is able to decide whether or not the actor should be fined, and their bond fully, or partially forfeit.

Of primary concern for this research issue is designing the data that is required to be available for 3rd parties to monitor the auction. Therefore, for subsequent contract design, this will inform decisions about event emission, auction state commits etc.

Possible Solutions

1. Use the current scenario which is a series of safes that are manually administered, and no automatic disconnect from the auction.
2. Provide some financial reward to third parties for monitoring the auction and asserting, out of band (i.e. off-chain), that an actor has violated bonded rules.
3. Use of fraud proofs to automatically disconnect actors and penalise their bonds (i.e. risc zero zk proof) with potential use of blob storage for auction state.

Research track

• Protocol security
• Decentralisation