StakeAPI.com
Architecture guide
Staking API security guide for identity, object authorization, transaction intent, custody, validator keys, slashing protection, audit evidence, and recovery.

Staking API security and slashing safety

Secure staking APIs with object-level authorization, intent-bound policy, independent custody verification, validator key isolation, slashing protection, tamper-evident audit records, and fail-safe recovery.

Identity

Separate human identity, workload identity, tenant scope, delegated access, rotation, and recovery.

Identity controls

Intent policy

Authorize amount, network, destination, validator, contract, route, and payload—not only the endpoint.

Intent controls

Evidence

Preserve approvals, policy version, intent digest, signer outcome, chain references, and reconciliation.

Audit controls

Enforce tenant and object boundaries

Authentication proves who or what is calling. Authorization must still verify access to the specific organization, wallet, validator, position, policy, approval, action, and report involved. Every identifier supplied by a client should be treated as untrusted until ownership and permission are checked server-side.

Use short-lived, narrowly scoped workload credentials and strong human authentication for privileged approval or administration. Propagate the original actor through internal services so audit evidence does not stop at a gateway service account.

Authorization questions for every mutation

  • Which tenant owns every referenced object?
  • May this actor perform this operation in this environment?
  • Does current policy allow this amount, network, asset, validator, contract, and destination?
  • Are required approvals bound to the unchanged intent?
  • Does custody independently verify the payload before signing?

Bind approvals to immutable intent

Policy decisions should cover the economic action and produce a digest. Custody receives the same digest and independently checks the transaction fields it is asked to sign.

  • Network and environment
  • Asset and raw amount
  • Validator, vote account, or contract route
  • Withdrawal or settlement destination
  • Approvals, limits, and policy version
  • Prepared payload expiration

Fail closed when

Identity is ambiguous, intent changed after approval, contract metadata is unknown, signer safety is unavailable, chain evidence conflicts, or a prior mutation has an uncertain outcome.

Audit and recovery

Keep an append-only transaction story

Reconstruct the request, policy evaluation, approvals, payload, signer outcome, broadcast, protocol observations, corrections, and final reconciliation without relying on mutable application rows.

Evidence package

Actor, tenant, object IDs, intent digest, policy and adapter version, approvals, timestamps, payload hash, transaction references, protocol evidence, and statement IDs.

Resilience tests

Credential revocation, RPC failover, provider disagreement, custody timeout, duplicate callback, audit-store outage, delayed confirmation, and an outcome-unknown mutation.