Until Referendum 1890, validators had no self-stake requirement. The protocol, therefore, did not require a minimum level of skin-in-the-game by every validator. This posed a potential security problem - if the nominator stake cannot be slashed and a critical number of validators do not have sufficient capital at stake, the security model weakens. Referendum 1890 addressed this by introducing a 10K DOT minimum self-stake requirement for validators. This referendum builds on that foundation by updating several staking configuration parameters as part of a broader staking system improvement:

1. The DAP budget allocation is updated to 45.2% for staker rewards, 22.6% for the validator self-stake incentive, and 32.2% as a buffer. A new mechanism specifically incentivises validators to increase their self-stake, all validators compete for a fixed DOT allocation from the DAP, distributed proportionally to a weight derived from each validator's self-stake. The weight function is concave, which prevents the budget from being captured by a small number of large self-stakers.
2. Validator commission is set to 0%, and the maximum commission cap is updated to match. Validators are rewarded for their own skin in the game rather than from nominator rewards.
3. The chill threshold is lowered to 32%, enabling permissionless chilling of validators whose self-stake falls below the minimum bond via chill_other. A safety floor ensures the active validator set cannot be reduced below a safe minimum through this mechanism.