Update protocol parameters due to post merge reduced block times

GGP: 0019 Scope: EpochManager and Staking contracts Created: 2023-01-26 Discussion: https://forum.thegraph.com/t/update-some-protocol-parameters-due-to-post-merge-reduced-block-times/3754

Graph Governance Proposal 0019

With the merge the block time has changed from an average of 13.4 seconds to a fixed 12 seconds. This means that any protocol parameters that depend on or were set considering the pre-merge average block time are now slightly off their intended targets since essentially the clock is running faster. While this is not necessarily detrimental to the protocol it signifies a “silent” update and participants interacting with the protocol might experience unexpected behavior. It is then desirable to update the parameters to match their original targets in days/hours.

This process has already been done for the protocol’s issuance rate in GGP 0013. However, there are at least two more parameters to update: EpochManager.epochLength and Staking.thawingPeriod.

epochLength: This parameter sets the length of an epoch in blocks and it’s currently set to 6646 blocks on mainnet. Pre-merge this translated to epoch duration of ~24 hours; post-merge it means epochs are ~22.15 hours long. This is most noticeable for example when considering the allocation epoch cap (maxAllocationEpochs), which is set in epochs so it changed from ~28 days to ~25,8 days. Anyone can close allocations after this period which means unaware indexers might lose out on rewards due to griefers closing allocations they thought were still safe.

thawingPeriod: Thawing period is the amount of time tokens are locked after unstaking and it’s also set in blocks; on mainnet it’s set to 186092 which means ~28 days pre-merge and ~25,8 days post-merge.

Following a successful "yes" vote, the protocol update should be carried out at the earliest convenience using The Graph Council’s Gnosis Multisig, changing the parameters according to the following table: