👨‍💻 Many teams started launching their pools since the launch of the nominators smart contract, so we've updated the article about validators ›

1. To become a validator, you need to have at least 300,000 TON – this can be either personal funds or funds raised from nominators, but staking will not work until you have the right amount.

2. The validation process consists of 18-hour rounds, preceded by a 9-hour voting phase, then the stakes is frozen for another 9 hours.

3. There are more than 200 validators on the blockchain at the moment, and their number will grow in the future.

For ordinary users it's easier to send coins to the staking smart contract and earn up to 12% APY, this is the best way to store coins. Usually it is safer to store coins in a staking.