On the 21st of December, the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee exercised its emergency powers under the Defined Emergency Procedure as outlined in [DIP-2] Multi-Sig Committee.
Following the execution of the second phase of the [DIP-14] Permissionless Mainnet Upgrade on the 21st of December 2023, it has been noticed that the maximum operator fee can only be set at 0 (SSV). The practical implication of this state was that operators that set their fee at higher than 0 would not be able to register on the network.
The DAO-controlled maximum operator fee parameter was introduced with the latest SSV smart contracts and deployed as part of the permissionless mainnet upgrade. The absence of such a parameter was considered a vulnerability that was found through the ssv.network Bug bounty program, as outlined in the [DIP-5] Grant Program and Committee. Unfortunately, the value of this parameter has not yet been defined by the DAO and was set to the value of 0 during the deployment. Not resolving this matter would have led to an unprofitable state for the ssv.network, i.e., it would cause substantial harm to the ssv.network DAO treasury and its members.
In reaction to the above, the ssv.network Multi-Sig has voted with 5/9 to consider this situation as a Defined Emergency Situation as described in [DIP-2] Multi-Sig Committee. Within the first 24 hours, the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee has found a solution to the issue, and as such, it required a 5/9 “Yes” vote to consider this situation as a Defined Emergency Situation. No member of the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee has voted “No”.
The ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee needed to choose a specific value for the maximum operator fee. In consultation with the Core Team of the ssv.network, the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee has set the value to 9566080000000 (around 25 SSV). This value has been chosen in consideration of potential attack vectors or exploits to the network if the maximum operator fee were to be set too high without limiting any known real-world use case. It is up to the DAO to later define (through a DAO vote) the optimal value for this parameter, based on real-world data.
In line with [DIP-2] Multi-Sig Committee, the ssv.network DAO Multi-Sig Committee is publishing the use of its emergency powers to the community.