i was mapping @Dusk 's block reward structure last night and found an economic trap i hadnt seen documented anywhere clearly.

the surface level split looks simple. 80% to the block generator, 10% to the voting committee, 10% to Dusk. straightforward enough.

but the 80% isnt guaranteed.

the generator's reward is split into two portions. 70% is fixed they get that regardless. the remaining 10% is variable and depends entirely on how many votes they include in the block certificate. include all known votes, earn the full 80%. deliberately exclude votes, your own reward shrinks.

i kept thinking about why this specific design exists.

on Dusk, block generators for all iterations within a round are predictable before the round ends. a generator scheduled for iteration 5 knows they're coming. the temptation is obvious let earlier iterations fail, win the block reward yourself. higher iteration generators have an incentive to sabotage earlier ones.

the variable reward flips that incentive. if you exclude votes to slow down earlier iterations, you're directly reducing your own payout. the protocol makes sabotage economically self-defeating.

then theres the penalty layer. minor faults trigger suspension excluded from selection for defined epochs. major faults like double voting trigger hard slashing a portion of stake gets burned permanently. not locked. burned.

$DUSK is the asset at stake in every one of these economic decisions.

is Dusk's incentive design sophisticated enough to prevent validator misbehavior at scale, or does the predictability of future generators create attack vectors the reward structure cant fully close??

@Dusk $DUSK #dusk

$CATI

What stops validators from misbehaving?