SSV team releases analysis of two slashing incidents, related to validator key management rather than protocol issues

Foresight News reported that the SSV team released a detailed post-incident analysis of two recent slashing events. The monitoring system first flagged a slashing event at 11:51 UTC on Wednesday. Approximately 90 minutes later, a second, larger-scale slashing event affected 39 validators. Investigations revealed that both incidents originated from external factors to the SSV protocol and were clearly related to validator key management. Of the two events, the larger one was associated with the long-term staking service provider Ankr. Ankr admitted that due to an operational maintenance configuration error, validator keys were simultaneously active on two different infrastructures, which led to the slashing. The company immediately shut down the affected operators and worked with SSV Labs to confirm the root cause. The smaller-scale event involved validators previously migrated from the custodial service provider Allnodes and is still under investigation, but investigators suspect that auxiliary validator settings also played a role.

SSV Labs CEO Alon Muroch stated that the validator slashing incidents did not compromise the SSV protocol, and operators or stakeholders do not need to take any action. Reviewing the logs of both incidents, there was no indication of double signing or faults on the SSV side.