What is a delegator?

Delegators are asset holders who cannot, or do not want to, run a validator themselves. Asset
holders can delegate asset to a validator and obtain a part of their revenue in exchange.

Because delegators share revenue with their validators, in some blockchains, they also share
risks. If a validator misbehaves, each of their delegators are partially slashed in proportion to
their delegated stake. This penalty is one of the reasons why delegators must perform due
diligence on validators before delegating. Spreading their stake over multiple validators is another
layer of protection.

Delegators play a critical role in the system, as they are responsible for choosing validators. Being
a delegator is not a passive role. Delegators must actively monitor the actions of their validators
and participate in governance.

📌 What is the incentive to run a validator?

Validators earn proportionally more revenue than their delegators because of the commission
they take on the staking rewards from their delegators.

Validators also play a major role in governance. If a delegator does not vote, they inherit the vote
from their validator. This voting inheritance gives validators a major responsibility in the
ecosystem.

Blockchain validation refers to the processing and confirmation of transaction blocks by specific
validator nodes. Once a validator node verifies a block, it is added to the blockchain ledger as a
permanent record.

PoW and PoS have quite different validation procedures. In PoW blockchains, validators, also
called miners, try to solve a complex computational task in a competitive fashion to validate a
block.

On PoS platforms, validation rights are typically secured by staking a certain amount of
cryptocurrency. On some platforms, your chance of getting to verify the next block is increased by
staking larger amounts of cryptocurrency. However, some other PoS blockchains, e.g., Ethereum
2.0, keep the staked amounts fixed per each validator node.
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On these blockchains, validators may increase their chances of getting selected by setting up
additional standard-sized validator nodes.

Block validation on your own is a relatively unrealistic undertaking, either on PoW or PoS
networks. On PoW networks, you might need prohibitively large amounts of computing power to
stand a chance in a competition against large mining pools. On PoS networks, you might require
too large a share of the total cryptocurrency supply to get block verification rights often enough.
Therefore, on both of these blockchain types, it is advisable to join a mining or staking pool to
earn consistent rewards from the block validation activity.