Staking

Staking is the prerequisite to become a validator. You need to send your tokens to the system staking smart contract to stake your token to register a new validator address.

Validator status

• Candidate Validator
  To deposit a certain amount of native token as collateral to become a candidate candidate

• Authorized Validator
  An authorized validator will submit a proposal of adding a new validator into the committer. Once the proposal is accepted by the majority authorized validators, the proposed validator becomes an authorized one as well immediately.

• Active Validator
  In the next epoch, the consensus engine selects the top authorized validators to be active validators to propose blocks and secure the network.

Prerequisites of becoming a Validator

Validators participating in the consensus algorithm constitute a consortium and the addition and deletion of the authority are determined by the vote of existing members.

Validator subjects must meet different conditions based on Application Chains. Each validator meets the minimum required self stake. These tokens are locked at staking contract address. You can query the amount of token in staking contract.

Validator Selection

The following steps are needed to become an active validator.

1. Candidate Validator: To deposit a certain amount of native token as collateral to become a validator candidate.
2. Voting Period: An active validator will submit a proposal of adding a new validator into the committer. During the voting period, active validator operators in this stage can vote Yes, No, or Abstain. If a proposal reaches quorum or the minimum threshold defined by the protocol it will pass to the next stage.
3. Authorized Validator: Once the proposal is accepted by the majority active validators, the proposed validator becomes an authorized one as well immediately.
4. Active Validator: In the next epoch, the consensus engine selects the top authorized validators to be active validators to propose blocks and secure the network.

Please note, only active validators will be able to participate in voting, making proposals and block generation. The number of active validators that can be authorized is governable and the active validators are selected according to the number of tokens staked.