Disputes

A dispute is how a model owner brings evidence of leaked weights or attestation fraud against an operator. The arbitration panel, a named multisig, rules on it under the Operator Agreement. A ruling for the claimant can freeze the operator, revoke all of its attestations and slash its bond to the claimant.

Who can open a dispute

You can open a dispute against an operator when all of these hold:

1. You own a model with a lane on one of that operator's nodes.
2. That lane has paid protocol fees to the treasury of at least the dispute deposit, and that much of it has not been used by an earlier dispute.
3. You pay the dispute deposit.

The second rule is the admission credit. A lane earns credit only when protocol fees actually leave it for the treasury at distribution; fees held as a claim count once the treasury claims them. Revenue to the owner or the operator never counts. Opening a dispute uses up credit equal to the deposit, so a later dispute on the same lane needs new fees.

At the launch fee of 500 bps, the protocol fee is 5% of what a lane distributes, so a lane earns credit equal to the deposit after it has distributed 20 times the deposit:

The lane record shows this directly: eligibleProtocolFeesPaid, admissionCreditConsumed and admissionCreditAvailable.

The deposit

The deposit is a fixed USDC amount, published as disputeDeposit in GET <api-url>/v1/parameters. Opening a dispute moves it from your USDC account into the dispute's own vault.

The deposit policy and its beneficiary are in settlementPolicies.disputeDeposit and disputeConfiguration in the parameters.

Open disputes at once

disputeConfiguration.maxOpenPerClaimantOperator limits how many disputes one claimant can have open against one operator, and maxOpenPerOperator (8 by default) limits open disputes against one operator in total.

Open a dispute in the app

1. Open Disputes from the top bar and connect the wallet that owns the model.
2. In Open a dispute, choose the lane under Against the operator of lane. Each entry names the lane, its node and the node's operator.
3. In Evidence, describe what leaked, where and when, with links to your archive. Only the SHA-256 of this text goes on-chain; keep the evidence itself for the arbitration panel.
4. Select Open dispute and sign. The transaction moves your deposit and records the dispute.

The table on the left lists every dispute with Dispute, Operator, Claimant, Deposit, Status and Ruling.

Open a dispute from code

Send the open_dispute intent to POST <api-url>/v1/transactions/preview:

const operator = await api.detail('operators', operatorId)
if (!operator.ok) throw new Error(operator.error.message)

const preview = await api.previewTransaction({
  action: 'open_dispute',
  authority: owner,
  operatorId,
  modelId,
  laneId,
  evidenceHash,
  disputeNonce: operator.data.nextDisputeSequence ?? '0',
})

While a dispute is open

• The dispute's status is open.
• The operator cannot request unbonding or withdraw its bond. The bond stays available for a slash.
• The operator's openDisputeCount on the Operators page counts it.

Rulings

The arbitration panel rules with rule_dispute. Each ruling records its time, the arbitration authority, a hash of the written ruling and its reason.

What each effect does:

The Disputes table shows the ruling as its reason and the slash amount.

The arbitration panel can also act on an operator directly, without a dispute: freeze it and revoke its attestations, and slash its bond to a model owner whose lane on that operator has paid fees. These records carry relationshipScope: "operator".

Claim the slash and your deposit

After a ruling for you, the reserved slash is settled from the operator's bond vault into the dispute's vault. Then:

1. Send the claim_dispute intent with the disputeId (and optionally a destinationAta).
2. Sign. Your deposit and the settled slash arrive in your canonical USDC account.

const preview = await api.previewTransaction({ action: 'claim_dispute', authority: owner, disputeId })

The dispute record shows the amounts: ruling.slashAmount, ruling.claimableAmount, ruling.pendingSlashAmount (reserved, not yet settled) and ruling.depositDisposition (returned or forfeited).

After a dismissal, the forfeiture beneficiary claims the deposit with claim_forfeited_deposit.

Dispute records

GET <api-url>/v1/disputes lists every dispute; filter with status, operatorId, modelId or claimant.