After the submission of referendum 112, seeking to increase the validator active set to 500, the community discussed the possibility and the need of Polkadot increasing the validators set.

Feedback from the proposals indicates two points:

• There's interest with increasing the number of validators of the active set but with increments;

• There needs to be some analysis on the effects of the increase to ensure there's no security concerns.

The results indicate that participating members would like to increase the active set to 400 with increments of 5 per era. They believe that this increase would not compromise the security of the chain and allow for natural (opportunistic) leveling as the set increases. Core developers have also agreed on similar increases by value:

“With increasing to 500, the amount of DOT needed to acquire a validator will sharply reduce from 1.7 mDOT now, to just around 370 kDOT. We think this is overall unavoidable, but we would personally suggest first increasing to 400 and re-evaluate”

This proposal aims to increase the active set of validators by 5 per era, for 20 eras. The call also executes a one-time increase by 3 to reach 400 validators by the end of the 20 eras. Note that this initiative is submitted on behalf of a coalition of 1kvP validators.

• Preimage Hash: 0xbacad43f5467717cb1edfba6317524dc1d24fe3246afbe6a8cea7ed5fae1ba5f
• Call data: HERE

Please note this proposal is submitted as an external motion: meaning if/after Council approves, the community will vote in referenda queue for the final decision.

Make sure to review and vote!