In Brief:
- An active Enjin governance referendum proposes lifting the Relaychain’s active validator count from 25 up to 35 across the coming 12 months.
- Four separate increases are enacted by one vote, each pre-scheduled on-chain at 90-day intervals, beginning in August 2026.
- A reviewed continuation to 50 comes next. Since April 2025 the cap has held at 25, and all slots are occupied right now.
A referendum is currently open at Enjin that would grow the Relaychain’s active validator set from 25 to 35 over the next 12 months.
Rather than four separate votes, the proposal packages all four increases together. Every step is pre-scheduled on-chain 90 days apart, meaning a single approval locks in the entire sequence instead of forcing operators back through governance each quarter. August 2026 brings the first increase, placing the increments at roughly one per quarter.
The @enjin Relaychain is growing.
A referendum is live to expand the active validator set from 25 → 35 over the next year. 35 now, a reviewed continuation to 50 after. Beyond that, the network decides.
More operators. More diversity. A network that's harder to disrupt and@EnjinView on X ↗
Anything past 35 requires a review first, according to the proposal. “35 now, a reviewed continuation to 50 after. Beyond that, the network decides,” Enjin said in a post on X.
Why the cap matters
Nominated proof-of-stake is what powers Relaychain. Each era — roughly 24 hours — validators are elected on the basis of their ENJ self-stake combined with nominations routed through Enjin’s nomination pools. Those elected produce blocks and participate in governance, and the block rewards they earn are shared with the pools that backed them during that era.
That makes the cap an economic gate. A minimum of 15,000 ENJ is required to bond as a validator. Actually reaching the active set demands far more: as of era 659, Enjin’s documentation places the minimum backing needed to become an active validator at 32.5 million ENJ, a number that shifts from era to era.
Adding ten slots distributes the same nominated stake over a broader group. The per-slot threshold falls as a result, opening seats to operators unable to gather tens of millions in pool support under current conditions. Enjin summed up the argument in three words: “More operators. More diversity.”
Where the set stands
Every one of the 25 slots is taken. Enjin lists 92 open nomination pools and a network inflation rate of 4.89%.
The minimum accepted by pools is 1 ENJ per user, and they issue sENJ, a liquid staking token. Because Relaychain doesn’t support direct staking, a pool is the only route by which nominators can reach validators — and holding a Degen NFT is a prerequisite for creating one.
There’s a downside to the pool structure as well. Should a validator breach security protocol or endanger the chain’s integrity, its rewards and staked ENJ are subject to slashing, as are the tokens held by the nominator pools backing it. Additional slots therefore spread that same slashing exposure over a larger number of operators and pools.
The last expansion
A raise like this has happened before. On April 28, 2025, Enjin moved the active validator limit from 15 to 25, stating then that the limit would rise to 50 active validators per era by the close of 2025.
It never materialized. More than a year on, the set remains at 25, and today’s referendum reframes that same 50 as a staged schedule with a review gate at 35 along the way.
No voting deadline or referendum number appeared in Enjin’s post.
Block 9,962,945 was where the April 2025 increase took effect.