Appeals

An appeal challenges a decided Intelligent Contract transaction before finalization. Anyone can appeal an eligible transaction during its appeal window by posting the bond quoted by the consensus contracts.

GenLayer has two appeal paths because a disputed committee decision and a round that failed to produce a decision require different remedies.

Validator appeals

A validator appeal challenges an Accepted or ValidatorsTimeout decision.

1. The protocol selects an entirely fresh appeal committee that did not participate in earlier rounds for the transaction.
2. The fresh validators evaluate the original leader's proposal.
3. They commit and reveal their votes in AppealCommitting and AppealRevealing.
4. If their majority differs from the original majority, the appeal succeeds and the transaction returns for recomputation. If the majorities match, the appeal fails.

For a normal committee of size N, the appeal committee has N + 2 validators. An appeal round does not choose a new leader or produce a new proposal; it rechecks the existing proposal.

Leader appeals

A leader appeal challenges an Undetermined or LeaderTimeout decision. It automatically starts a new proposal round instead of asking an appeal committee to vote on the old result.

• After Undetermined, the protocol drops the previous leader, carries forward the remaining committee members, adds fresh validators, and uses the larger normal-round committee size.
• After LeaderTimeout, the protocol keeps the committee, removes the timed-out leader, and selects a new leader from the remaining members.

The new round's outcome determines whether the appeal was economically successful.

Committee growth

Normal execution and validator-appeal committees follow interleaved growth schedules. The first normal round currently uses 5 validators, its validator appeal uses 7 fresh validators, and the next expanded normal round uses 11. Later rounds continue growing. These values are protocol parameters and can change through a protocol upgrade.

Bonds and incentives

The appeal bond covers the additional validation work and discourages frivolous challenges. The consensus contracts calculate the required amount from the appeal type and round size.

• A successful appellant recovers the bond and receives the configured reward.
• A failed validator appeal forfeits its bond to the majority-aligned validators in that appeal round.
• Leader-appeal bond handling depends on the prior status and the result of the new round.

Clients should request the current bond quote instead of hardcoding an amount.

Appeal windows and dependent transactions

The appeal-window duration and its reduction after an unsuccessful validator appeal are governance-managed parameters. The window pauses while a validator appeal is voting. A successful appeal gives the recomputed transaction a fresh window.

Because transactions for one Intelligent Contract depend on earlier state, a successful appeal can return later non-finalized transactions in that contract's queues for recomputation. Appeals on those dependent transactions are canceled and their bonds refunded when necessary.

Deterministic-violation tribunals are separate. They decide penalties for provable execution fraud but do not change the transaction outcome. See slashing.