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Withdrawal Delayer Protocol

Goal

As announced in the project whitepaper as well as the documentation, Hermez will be covering an initial phase of network bootstrapping where some additional security measures are deployed as a good practice for risk management.

An automated limitation on withdrawals will be implemented as an additional checkpoint to identify anomalous behavior of the network. In such conditions, some time for the developers team to verify the system is required and to identify if the behavior has evolved and a change of security parameters is needed.

The purpose of this smart contract is to delay the withdraw in case of anomalous behavior of the network. Users will be prompted to try again after some time or they can decide to use this delayed withdraw alternative with a guaranteed delay time. Hence, tokens will be held by the smart contract for a period of D and only afterward tokens could be really withdrawn.

Actors

  • hermezRollup: Smart contract responsible for making deposits and it's able to change the delay
  • hermezKeeperAddress: can enable emergency mode and modify the delay to make a withdrawal
  • hermezGovernanceDAOAddress: can claim the funds in an emergency mode
  • whiteHackGroupAddress: can claim the funds in an emergency when MAX_EMERGENCY_MODE_TIME is exceeded

These addresses can only be updated if the sender of the transaction that changes them is the current address.

Mechanism

When a certain state has been reached in Hermez Contract, the tokens will be sent to the WithdrawalDelayer contract.

So, the tokens will be in the contract during period D. In that period it will be decided whether it was an attack or a normal process.

That period D can only be changed by hermezKeeperAddress or by hermezRollup.

Actions that will be taken if an attack is detected are the following ones:

  • The WithdrawalDelayer contract will stay in NORMAL_MODE until it is decided that there has been an attack. Then, if there was an attack, it would go to EMERGENCY_MODE and the decision can not be reversed.
  • Only hermezKeeperAddress will be able to put the system in EMERGENCY_MODE.

There will be a delay time D to decide if there has been an attack or not:

  • No attack:
    • WithdrawalDelayer remains in NORMAL_MODE, and users will be able to withdraw their tokens normally but with a delay
  • Attack:
    • WithdrawalDelayer change to EMERGENCY_MODE, then only GovernanceDAO will be able to withdraw the funds
    • Aragon court will have the option to reject proposals on how the GovernanceDAO will distribute the funds
    • If after MAX_EMERGENCY_MODE_TIME the funds are still stopped, the whiteHackGroupAddress can withdraw the funds if they think it's necessary to avoid a permanent block

Parameters

  • D: delay to withdraw from WithdrawalDelayer measured in seconds
  • MAX_WITHDRAWAL_DELAY: maximum delay time to decide if it was an attack or not, measured in weeks --> 2 weeks
  • MAX_EMERGENCY_MODE_TIME: maximum time that funds can stay in the contract, measured in weeks --> 6 months (~ 26 weeks)