Skip to content

Add note about withdrawal deduction in gloas #5128

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
jtraglia merged 2 commits into from
Apr 20, 2026
Merged

Add note about withdrawal deduction in gloas #5128

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
ccabbb9
Add note about withdrawal deduction in gloas
nflaig Apr 17, 2026
0ad9aa2
Merge branch 'master' into withdrawal-deduction-note
jtraglia Apr 20, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
14 changes: 14 additions & 0 deletions specs/gloas/beacon-chain.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -1187,6 +1187,20 @@ withdrawals in the execution layer. `process_withdrawals` must be called after
before `process_execution_payload_bid` as the latter function affects validator
balances.

*Note*: Unlike deposits (which are applied at the child's slot via
`apply_parent_execution_payload`), withdrawal balance deductions are applied
immediately via `apply_withdrawals`. Deferring the deduction to the child's slot
would break the total supply invariant: state transitions between the commitment
slot and the deduction slot (e.g., `process_pending_consolidations` at an epoch
boundary) can reduce a validator's balance below the committed withdrawal
amount, causing `decrease_balance` to saturate at zero. Since the execution
layer mints the full committed amount regardless, any CL-side saturation creates
a net supply inflation. As a consequence, `state.balances` reflects the
withdrawal deduction before the corresponding execution payload is confirmed,
creating a transient asymmetry with the EL state at `state.latest_block_hash`.
Off-chain consumers that require CL/EL balance consistency can reconstruct
pre-deduction balances by adding back `state.payload_expected_withdrawals`.

```python
def process_withdrawals(
state: BeaconState,
Expand Down