Validator
What is a Validator?
Validators are the actors responsible for keeping the Palliora network running correctly.
They maintain the blockchain, validate transactions, and participate in consensus to agree on the order and validity of blocks. In short, validators ensure that Palliora has a reliable, tamper-resistant ledger that everyone can depend on.
While many Palliora features happen off-chain, validators are what make those features accountable on-chain.
The problem Validators solve
Any decentralised system needs a shared source of truth.
Without validators, there is no reliable way to agree on which transactions happened, in what order, or whether protocol rules were followed. Contracts would be unenforceable, rewards disputable, and the system vulnerable to manipulation.
Validators solve this by collectively maintaining and securing the Palliora blockchain. They ensure that once something is recorded and finalised, it cannot be quietly changed or ignored.
What Validators do
Validators verify incoming transactions before including them in blocks. This includes checking digital signatures, account balances, and adherence to protocol rules.
They propose new blocks and participate in a Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus process to agree on block order and validity. Through this process, the network can continue operating correctly even if a subset of validators behaves maliciously or becomes unavailable.
Each validator maintains a full copy of the blockchain state, including account balances and smart contract data. This allows them to independently verify correctness rather than relying on other nodes.
Once consensus is reached, validators attest to block validity and participate in finalisation. After finalisation, the recorded state becomes irreversible under normal operating conditions.
Trust, staking and operational requirements
Validators are not trusted by reputation. They are trusted because they have economic stake and operational responsibility.
To participate, validators must lock up tokens as collateral. The size of the stake determines eligibility and may influence rewards. In return, validators earn staking rewards and a share of transaction fees generated by the network.
Because validators secure the foundation of the system, they are expected to meet strict operational standards. This includes high uptime requirements, sufficient hardware capacity, and secure key management practices. Hardware security modules are recommended to protect private keys.
Validators may also undergo security audits or meet other infrastructure requirements defined by the network.
Rewards and penalties
Validators are rewarded for honest participation and penalised for misconduct or negligence.
They earn rewards proportionally to their stake and network activity. However, if a validator behaves maliciously, part of their stake can be slashed.
Examples of slashable behaviour include:
Signing conflicting blocks
Proposing invalid blocks
Extended periods of downtime
This economic design ensures that acting honestly is the rational strategy.
What Validators are not
Validators do not handle private data.
They do not decrypt inputs, run confidential computation, or decide who can access data. Those responsibilities belong to Guardians, calculators, and verifiers.
Validators also do not define protocol policy or upgrades. Their role is operational. They enforce the current rules of the network, not decide future ones.
How Validators fit into Palliora
Validators secure the foundation on which everything else in Palliora is built.
Computable contracts, Guardian coordination, rewards, penalties, and data commitments all rely on the blockchain maintained by validators. The Data Availability layer records commitments and proofs on-chain, and validators ensure those records are correct and final.
Without validators, Palliora would have no reliable execution history. With them, off-chain computation and data sharing remain anchored to an immutable ledger.
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