Economic Security Budget
The economic security budget is the total value of assets at stake that must be compromised to successfully attack a blockchain network. It represents the cost of an adversarial takeover, typically calculated as the value of the tokens staked or the cost of the hardware and energy required to control the consensus process.
A high economic security budget is essential for protecting the network from large-scale attacks, such as 51% attacks or long-range reorganizations. In modular systems, the security budget can be shared across multiple layers, allowing smaller chains to inherit the robust security of a larger base layer.
This concept is central to the design of tokenomics and the analysis of systemic risk. By quantifying the cost of corruption, the economic security budget provides a measurable metric for the robustness and resilience of a protocol.
It is a key factor in assessing the risk of financial derivatives built on top of the network.