Questions from a student :)

Miscellaneous
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Hi everyone,

I am writing a paper on the Cosmos Network and its functioning and would appreciate if you could help me out. I have 2 questions:

  • What exactly is the reserve pool?
  • What does it mean when atoms are burned? Are the erased from the system? For instance, if a validator gets his atoms slashed, what happens to those atoms?

Thank you in advance!

bm

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Hi! Very cool that you’re writing about Cosmos. To be clear there is the Cosmos Network (many different blockchains that will soon be connected together) and there is the Cosmos Hub (ATOM), the most well-known chain in the Cosmos Network. I assume you’re asking about the Hub.

When you say reserve pool, I’m guessing you mean the Community Pool. In short it’s an account where a portion (currently 2%) of all staking rewards and transaction fees are diverted. They accumulate here and are then disbursed via a governance proposal. You can read more about this here: https://github.com/gavinly/CosmosCommunitySpend

I don’t recall what happens when ATOMs are burned eg. in a slashing event. @ebuchman or @sunnya97or @zaki @zaki_iqlusion will almost definitely know.

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When a validator is slashed, the slashed atoms are actually burned - they are removed from the system and result in a decrease in the total supply. This is described in https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/master/x/staking/spec/02_state_transitions.md#slash-validator and the code is in https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/master/x/staking/keeper/slash.go#L24