In Brief:
- A live Enjin governance referendum would raise the Relaychain’s active validator set from 25 to 35 over the next 12 months.
- A single vote enacts four increases, pre-scheduled on-chain 90 days apart, with the first landing in August 2026.
- A reviewed continuation to 50 follows. The cap has sat at 25 since April 2025 and every slot is currently filled.
Enjin has a referendum live to expand the Relaychain’s active validator set from 25 to 35 over the next 12 months.
The proposal bundles four increases into one vote. Each step is pre-scheduled on-chain 90 days apart, so approval locks in the full sequence rather than sending operators back to governance every quarter. The first increase lands in August 2026, which puts 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 ↗
Beyond 35, the proposal calls for a review before going further. “35 now, a reviewed continuation to 50 after. Beyond that, the network decides,” Enjin said in a post on X.
Why the cap matters
Relaychain runs nominated proof-of-stake. Validators are elected each era, about 24 hours, based on their ENJ self-stake plus nominations routed through Enjin’s nomination pools. Elected validators produce blocks and take part in governance, and they share block rewards with the pools that backed them that era.
So the cap functions as an economic gate. Bonding as a validator takes a minimum of 15,000 ENJ. Getting into the active set takes far more: Enjin’s documentation puts the minimum backing required to become an active validator at 32.5 million ENJ as of era 659, a figure that moves era to era.
Ten additional slots spread the same nominated stake across a wider set. That drops the per-slot threshold and makes seats contestable for operators who can’t assemble tens of millions in pool support today. Enjin put the case for the change in three words: “More operators. More diversity.”
Where the set stands
All 25 slots are full. Enjin lists 92 open nomination pools and a network inflation rate of 4.89%.
Pools accept a minimum of 1 ENJ per user and issue sENJ, a liquid staking token. Direct staking isn’t supported on Relaychain, so nominators reach validators only through a pool, and creating one requires holding a Degen NFT.
The pool structure cuts both ways. If a validator breaks security protocol or puts the integrity of the chain at risk, its rewards and staked ENJ can be slashed along with the tokens of the nominator pools that backed it. More slots means the same slashing exposure spread across more operators and more pools.
The last expansion
This isn’t the first raise. Enjin lifted the active validator limit from 15 to 25 on April 28, 2025, and said at the time the limit was set to increase to 50 active validators per era by the end of 2025.
That didn’t happen. The set is still 25 more than a year later, and the current referendum restates the same 50 as a staged schedule with a review gate at 35 in between.
Enjin’s post didn’t include a voting deadline or a referendum number.
The April 2025 increase took effect at block 9,962,945.
