Network Security Budget
The network security budget is the total value of rewards, including block subsidies and transaction fees, provided to network participants to maintain the integrity of the ledger. This budget represents the cost to defend the network against adversarial attacks, such as 51 percent attacks in proof-of-work systems or long-range attacks in proof-of-stake systems.
A sufficient security budget is necessary to ensure that the economic cost of compromising the network remains prohibitively high for any potential attacker. As a network matures, the security budget must be carefully managed to balance the need for high security with the economic sustainability of the protocol.
If the budget is too low, the network becomes vulnerable; if it is too high, it may impose excessive costs on users or result in unsustainable token inflation.