Challenging

What is challenging?

Challenging an Ante Test expresses belief that the tested guarantee could/will fail.

You will pay "decay" fees to stakers over time to challenge a test.

However, if the test fails, you can claim a portion of staked funds as a reward.

Failed tests reward challengers for identifying risk in the system

How does decay work?

Your challenged funds will undergo continuous decay over time (by default, this is 100% per year). Some amount of this may be claimed by the test author; the rest is allocated to stakers.

How do payouts work?

Challengers in a pool can check the underlying test at any point. If the test fails, the pool is locked and staker funds can be claimed by challengers.

5% of total staked balance are allocated to the challenger that made the failing test check. The remaining 95% of staker balance is distributed amongst all eligible challengers:

$$reward \approx your\,challenge + \left(\frac{your\,challenge}{total\,challenge} \right) total\,stake \cdot 0.95$$

Example:

You have 0.5 WETH challenged in a test when another challenger triggers test failure. Staker balance is 20 WETH and total challenger balance is 1 WETH.

$$\begin{align*} claimable\,reward &= 0.5\text{ WETH} + \left(\frac{0.5\text{ WETH}}{1\text{ WETH}} \right) 20\text{ WETH} \times 0.95 \\ &= 10\text{ WETH} \end{align*}$$

Tip: Don't want to do math? Each pool has a "payout floor" like 1:10. This serves as a soft floor for potential payout on test failure: for a 1:10 payout floor, for every 1 ETH you challenge you could potentially get 10 ETH on test failure.