How fast will I know if my validator gets slashed?

Worst case ~60 seconds after the beacon chain records the slashing — we poll on a 1-minute cron. Best case ~5–15 seconds. Alerts go out simultaneously across all channels you have configured.

Do I need to pay for slashing alerts?

No. Slashing alerts are free on every Eyrium tier. The email channel works at signup. Telegram and native mobile push require Pro ($7/mo) because those channels cost us per-message; email doesn't.

What information is in the slashing alert?

Validator index, public key, the status it transitioned from, the status it transitioned to (active_slashed), and the epoch the slashing was recorded in. Enough to look up the slashing event on a beacon explorer and start your incident response.

Can I get slashing alerts without monitoring anything else?

Yes. Add a validator to Eyrium and slashing alerts are on by default. You don't need to configure any other alert types if you only care about slashing.

Does Eyrium also alert on attestation misses, balance drops, and fee-recipient changes?

Yes. Slashing is one of four event types we fire on. See /features/missed-attestation-alerts for the noisiest category, where our streak threshold and head-only-miss suppression matter.

I think I've been slashed but I'm not on Eyrium — what now?

Stop all validator processes on every machine with the keys, then confirm on a beacon explorer. The 'What to do if your validator has been slashed' section above walks through the full sequence.

Ethereum validator slashing alerts

What you get: Eyrium fires a slashing alert within ~60 seconds of the slashing event being recorded on the beacon chain. Delivered via email, native Telegram, and iOS/Android push.

Cost: Free. Slashing alerts are included on every tier — you don't need to pay to be notified when something goes catastrophically wrong.

Setup: None. Add a validator, slashing alerts are on by default. Email channel works at signup; Telegram and push require Pro ($7/mo).

What is validator slashing?

Slashing is the Ethereum protocol's enforcement mechanism for validators that break consensus rules. If your validator is slashed, you immediately lose a portion of your stake and are forcibly exited from the validator set. The longer it takes you to notice, the worse the damage gets — once slashed, your validator continues to leak balance until it's fully exited from the chain.

Slashing happens for three offenses:

Double proposal — signing two different blocks for the same slot.
Double vote — signing two different attestations for the same target epoch.
Surround vote — signing an attestation whose vote "surrounds" or is "surrounded by" another of your votes.

In practice, slashing is almost always caused by running the same validator keys on two nodes simultaneously (failed failover, lazy DR setup, accidental duplicate import). Less commonly, it's caused by buggy validator client software. It is almost never caused by malicious intent — it's an operational accident.

How Eyrium's slashing alert works

When the beacon chain emits a status transition for your validator into the active_slashed state, Eyrium's polling loop catches it and fires an alert.

Latency: worst case ~60 seconds (we poll on a 1-minute cron). Best case ~5–15 seconds if the slashing happens early in the polling window.
Channels: email (all tiers), native Telegram bot (Pro), native iOS + Android push (Pro). You can have all three deliver in parallel.
Alert payload: validator index, public key, the status it transitioned from, the status it transitioned to (active_slashed), and the epoch.
Default-on: every validator you add to Eyrium has slashing alerts enabled. You don't need to configure anything — if you've added a validator, you're covered.

How it compares

	Eyrium	beaconcha.in	Rated Network
Slashing alert	✓	✓	✗ (not a documented alerts product)
Free-tier coverage	✓	Tier-dependent	n/a
Latency	~60s worst case	Not publicly specified	n/a
Native Telegram delivery	✓	✗ (webhook only)	✗
Native mobile push	✓	✓	✗

What to do if your validator has been slashed

If you've been slashed — or you suspect you have — work through this in order:

1. Stop all validator processes on every machine that has the keys. Before anything else, take all duplicate keys offline. If you don't know which machine fired the slashable attestation, take all of them offline. You cannot make the existing slash worse, but you can absolutely add more slashes if the duplicate setup is still running.

2. Confirm the slashing on a block explorer. Look up your validator index on beaconcha.in or any beacon explorer. The validator's status will read active_slashed and there will be a withdrawable epoch in the future. Note the slashing block — this tells you exactly when it happened.

3. Calculate the damage. Initial slashing penalty is small (1/32 of effective balance), but the validator continues to leak balance via correlated penalties until it's exited (~36 days). The total loss depends on how many other validators are slashed in the same window — solo slashing in a quiet window is usually 1-2 ETH; mass slashing in a contagion event can lose substantially more.

4. Audit how it happened. Almost always: duplicate keys running on two machines. Common causes:

Failover ran but original didn't shut down
Restored from backup without exiting on the original
Cloud snapshot rehydration brought a stale validator back online
Manual import into a second client without removing from the first

5. Don't restart the slashed validator. It's exiting whether you like it or not. Restarting it can fire additional slashable offenses if the duplicate is still alive somewhere. Leave it down and wait for the exit to complete.

6. If you have other validators, audit them. A misconfiguration that slashed one validator may exist for others. Check your key management and process supervision before bringing anything new online.

7. Set up alerts on a tool you trust. If you're reading this after a slash with no monitoring, that's the gap — install something (Eyrium, beaconcha.in, anything) so the next failure mode you experience isn't silent for hours.

FAQ

How fast will I know if my validator gets slashed?: Worst case ~60 seconds after the beacon chain records the slashing — we poll on a 1-minute cron. Best case ~5–15 seconds. Alerts go out simultaneously across all channels you have configured.
Do I need to pay for slashing alerts?: No. Slashing alerts are free on every Eyrium tier. The email channel works at signup. Telegram and native mobile push require Pro ($7/mo) because those channels cost us per-message; email doesn't.
What information is in the slashing alert?: Validator index, public key, the status it transitioned from, the status it transitioned to (active_slashed), and the epoch the slashing was recorded in. Enough to look up the slashing event on a beacon explorer and start your incident response.
Can I get slashing alerts without monitoring anything else?: Yes. Add a validator to Eyrium and slashing alerts are on by default. You don't need to configure any other alert types if you only care about slashing.
Does Eyrium also alert on attestation misses, balance drops, and fee-recipient changes?: Yes. Slashing is one of four event types we fire on. See /features/missed-attestation-alerts for the noisiest category, where our streak threshold and head-only-miss suppression matter.
I think I've been slashed but I'm not on Eyrium — what now?: Stop all validator processes on every machine with the keys, then confirm on a beacon explorer. The 'What to do if your validator has been slashed' section above walks through the full sequence.

Set up slashing alerts in under 60 seconds.

Add your validator index, pick your channels, done. Free tier covers email-based slashing alerts — you don't need a paid plan to get notified when something goes catastrophically wrong.

Get started →