To help make validating on Polkadot more accessible the following proposal aims to increase the maximum number of active validators per era from 297 to 500.

Currently validators require having at least ~1.663.500 DOT in nominations in order to have a chance at becoming an active validator. This has created a challenge for independent decentralized validators to get into the active set, even when getting support from the thousand validator programme. Increasing the maximum number of active validators per set should help make validating on Polkadot more open to individuals, and lower the nomination target barrier.

![](https://i.imgur.com/ymepSVw.png)
![](https://i.imgur.com/Kula6ci.png)

preimage hash: 0x8a9858782be312ee01e3c12adcbda468f8b8dc46a1e5f5cb029e0ce231ebd705
Encoded call: https://polkadot.js.org/apps/?rpc=wss%3A%2F%2Frpc.polkadot.io#/extrinsics/decode/0x0709d107

 :

1. To make validating on Polkadot more accessible, this proposal aims to increase the maximum number of active validators per era from 297 to 500.
2. Currently validators require having at least ~1.663.500 DOT in nominations in order to have a chance at becoming an active validator.
3. Increasing the maximum number of active validators per set should help make validating on Polkadot more open to individuals, and lower the nomination target barrier.
4. The preimage hash and encoded call of the PolkAssembly Referendum post can be found for reference.

#112 Increase maximum active validator count to 500