How to Become a Blockchain Validator

A blockchain validator is a participant in a blockchain network who checks that new transactions and blocks follow the network’s rules before those blocks are permanently added to the ledger.

Blockchains offer incentives in the form of their native tokens to validators, which are usually proportional to their stake in the network. The actual value of these rewards fluctuates based on market conditions, including price, total value locked (TVL), the number of active validators, penalties, commissions, and fee/MEV capture.

Based on these factors that affect validator rewards, here’s a list of blockchains that provide viable profit opportunities for validators and how you can become one on the chain.

Ethereum

To become a validator on the Ethereum network, you need to run an Ethereum node and deposit 32 ETH (~84,000 USD) to activate your validator account. The minimum hardware requirements for running a node include 4-8 GB RAM, 2TB SSD, and a 64-bit x86 processor.

You can build a hardware rig or use a dedicated cloud server. The estimated cost of purchasing the hardware is around 650-800 USD (source: Amazon.com). Cloud servers would cost around ~ 148 USD/month.

As a validator, you have to check new blocks and “attest” to them if they are valid, and propose new blocks when you are randomly selected from the validator pool to propose one.

If you fail to do either of these tasks, you miss out on the ETH rewards associated with that block. Validators can also be tasked with signature aggregation and participating in sync committees.

Validators on ETH earn about 3.148% APY on their stake on ETH issuance rewards alone; this number can rise to about 5.69% if you add block tips and maximal extractable value (MEV), assuming your node has 100% uptime. If your node does anything malicious, such as proposing multiple blocks for the same slot, your staked ETH can be “slashed” by up to 1 ETH, and you will be removed from the network. You can read more on how rewards and penalties are calculated in the official Ethereum documentation.

The approximate cost (excluding electricity and internet costs) for setting up an Ethereum validator is 32 ETH + $800, which amounts to approximately ~ 84,800 USD. Assuming 100% uptime, fair MEV rewards, and tips, the average Ethereum validator earns ~ 1.8203 ETH (~4800 USD) yearly from a single node.

Here’s the official guide on how to become an Ethereum validator, and here’s a handy tool you can use to estimate validator rewards based on real-time market data: Ethereum staking calculator.

Solana

The minimum hardware requirements for running a Solana validator are a 12-core/24-thread CPU at 2.8 GHz or faster with SHA and AVX2 instruction support, 256 GB of ECC RAM, separate PCIe Gen3×4 NVMe SSDs of roughly 500 GB for accounts, 1 TB for the ledger and 250 GB for snapshots with an optional 500 GB OS drive, plus a symmetric 1 Gbps internet connection. You can find the full hardware recommendations in the Agave documentation.

A physical setup would cost anywhere from ~ 2600 to 5000 USD, excluding internet and electricity costs. Alternatively, cloud solutions cost around 4,500 USD per year; however, they are a better option, as managing the bandwidth and internet required for voting can be difficult.

The next substantial cost associated with running a Solana validator is the voting fees. Validators are required to send a vote transaction for every slot they agree with, and these transactions can incur up to 1.1 SOL (~ 185 USD) in fees per day.

There is no strict minimum amount of SOL you need to run a validator, so “theoretically,” you can deposit 1 SOL. However, according to Cogent Crypto’s validator profit calculator, the minimum amount of SOL to be profitable is ~5700 SOL (~ 934,000 USD). Since Solana operates a delegated-POS system, you do not need to own all your stake; you can incentivize SOL holders to delegate their tokens to you and charge them a commission ranging between 0 to 100% deducted from their inflation rewards.

The image below shows the top 14 Solana validators, their commission, active SOL staked, and other parameters.

For earnings, Solana validators earn from inflation/issuance rewards (on their stake), priority fees (tips), and MEV. Most of the rewards come from issuance. However, tips also make up a good portion. According to Blockworks research, $240 million in priority fees/tips flowed to validators in Jan 2025 alone.

The current barrier of entry for a Solana validator is high compared to Ethereum. However, with the Alpenglow upgrade, you can run a Solana validator on an 8- to 16-core CPU (no PoH grind), 128 GB of ECC RAM, a single 1 TB NVMe drive for both ledger and accounts, and the same 1 Gbps uplink, eliminating the need for a separate snapshot drive or vote-spam IOPS.

Alpenglow also removes voting fees, bringing the minimum amount of SOL to be profitable down from ~ 5700 SOL to around ~ 530 SOL. Note that these figures are speculative as the inflation model might be tweaked to balance the removal of the voting fee, thus increasing the minimum amount required to be profitable.

Here’s the official guide on how to setup a Solana validator. To reduce the barrier of entry for validators, the Solana Foundation has some initiatives to reduce cost. Here’s a helpful blog post by Helius, whose validator account earns approximately $ 18 million per year, on Solana validator economics.

Sui

To become a SUI validator, you have to run a SUI node and have a minimum of 30 million SUI (~ 104.7 million USD) in your staking pool (deposited or delegated). The Sui Foundation helps members of their delegation program satisfy the 30 million threshold. However, the application details are very vague, and the only reference to the program is this blog post from 2022.

Once you become a validator, your staking pool must maintain a balance of at least 20 million SUI (~ 69.8 million USD) or risk removal after a 7-epoch (1 epoch = 24 hours) grace period. If your pool falls below 15 million SUI, you will be removed as a validator on the next epoch.

The minimum hardware requirements for running a Sui node are a server with 24 physical CPU cores (48 vCPUs), 128 GB of RAM, a 4 TB NVMe SSD, and a 1 Gbps network connection. The estimated cost for building a hardware rig that meets these requirements, according to Amazon.com is around 1200 - 1400 USD (refurbished) and 8000 - 9000 USD (new).

Running a dedicated server that meets the hardware requirements would cost around 500 USD per month, but this can vary greatly depending on the service you choose.

Sui validators earn an average of 2.34% APY on their stake, which comes from yield on their stake, commission on delegated stake, and an automatic storage-cost rebate. Thus, with the allowable balance of 20 million SUI, validators make ~ 1.63 million USD per year.

There’s currently a proposal to reduce the barrier of entry for new validators, SIP-39. This proposal, when fully rolled out, will replace the 30 million SUI requirement with “3 voting power”. A “voting power” is calculated by dividing a validator’s stake by the total stake and multiplying it by the fixed value of 10,000, which is the total available voting power for each epoch.

Thus, one voting power equals 0.01 % of the total stake. Currently, that value (total stake, May 2025 = 7.49 billion SUI) is 749,000 SUI—making the entry requirement 2.247 million SUI ( ~7.84 million USD).

Here’s the official guide for becoming a validator on Sui.

BNB Chain (BSC)

To become a validator on the BNB chain, formerly known as the Binance Smart Chain, you need to run a BSC node and stake a minimum of 2000 + 1 BNB (~ 1.3 million USD). 2,000 BNB is your self-stake, and 1 BNB is burned to a dead-address.

The hardware requirements to run a BNB chain node are 16 CPU cores, 64 GB RAM, NVMe SSD 2-3 TB, ≥ 1 GB symmetrical bandwidth, which will cost about ~ 875 to 1500 USD (Amazon.com) for hardware. If you use a dedicated cloud server, it would cost anywhere from 104 to 455 USD/month.

Every validator earns a daily base reward of up to approximately 1.92% APY on their deposited stake. If you sit in the top-21 “Cabinet,” (validators with the largest amount of delegated BNB at the end of each UTC-day election cycle) you also keep almost all gas fees and any MEV in the blocks you build, so your real yield rises by a few additional tenths of a percent when traffic is normal and much more during busy periods; on top of that you skim a commission (typically around 10%) from your delegators’ rewards.

Income falls whenever you miss duties, and serious faults are expensive: double-signing or malicious votes forfeit 200 BNB of your own bond and sideline you for thirty days, while extended downtime costs 10 BNB and a two-day “jail”.

Thus, the income of a BNB validator, who holds the minimum stake, is ~ 25,000 USD per year. Here’s the official guide on becoming a validator on BNB Chain.

Cosmos

The hardware requirements for running a validator node on Cosmos are vague, as the docs only mention the RAM and storage requirements: 32 GB of RAM and 500 GB to 2 TB of storage.

Most consumer-grade PCs that fit those specs can be picked up for roughly 350 – 800 USD on Amazon, or rented for about ****$92 – $148 per month on dedicated cloud server plans. There is no minimum stake required to become a validator; however, certain caveats apply to this rule.

To become a validator on Cosmos, you have to send a “declare-candidacy” transaction with some required parameters, which include but is not limited to your PubKey, minimum self-bond amount (minimum amount of ATOM you need to have at all times), initial self-bond amount, etc.

Once you declare candidacy, Atom holders can delegate atoms to your pool, effectively adding stake to this pool. The total stake of an address is the combination of Atoms bonded by delegators and Atoms self-bonded by the entity that designated itself.

Out of all the candidates that signaled themselves, the 100 with the most stake are the ones who are designated as validators. If a validator’s total stake falls below the top 100, then that validator loses its validator privileges.

However, the maximum number of validators increases every year and is set to triple within 10 years since launch. Following the schedule, the current maximum number should be 208 (Year 6).

Thus, making the minimum stake any number of ATOM that puts you in the top 200 (Year 6). That value currently sits at 2,740 ATOM (~ 11,900 USD), which is the stake of the 198th validator.

Cosmos stakers and, by extension, validators earn a “base” compounded ~17 – 19 % APY on their self-stake. In addition to that, they earn from commissions and play a significant role in governance, as all their delegators who don’t vote automatically inherit their vote.

Here’s the official guide to becoming a validator on Cosmos.

Avalanche

To become a validator on Avalanche, you have to run a node and stake a minimum of 2,000 AVAX (~ 41,460 USD). The maximum weight of a validator (their own stake plus the stake delegated to them) is 3 million AVAX.

One interesting quirk of the Avalanche validators is that the maximum amount of tokens your validator pool can hold is 5 times your staked amount. For example, if you stake 2,000 AVAX to become a validator, only 8,000 AVAX can be delegated to your node, making the total 10,000.

The hardware requirements for running a node are vague; publicly accessible materials only list the storage and RAM requirements: 200 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM.

Most consumer-grade PCs easily satisfy 8 GB of RAM and ~200 GB of SSD storage, and cost anywhere from $ ****120 to $ 260, or roughly $ 8 to $ 27 per month if you rent a VPS or entry-level bare-metal instance.

The current reward percentage for staking is 8.5 % APY. Additionally, validators may also receive a percentage of the transaction fees generated on the network or additional tokens. Thus, on a 2,000 AVAX stake, you’d receive ~ 3,500 USD per year. Here’s the official guide on becoming a validator on the Avalanche chain.

TL;DR

Chain	Number of active validators(May 2025)	Average number of DAW (Daily Active Wallets	Estimated cost of entry (USD)	Minimum stake to become profitable	Average APY on Stake (%)
Ethereum	1,054,030	490k - 529k	85,776	32 ETH	3
Solana	1,231	4.4 - 5 million	938,500	5740 SOL	5-6
Sui	114	286k - 312k	104,706,000	30 million SUI	2.37
BNB Chain	45	1.5 - 1.8 million	1,305,460	2,001 BNB	1.92
Cosmos	200	11k - 16k	13,776	3,000 ATOM	unknown
Avalanche	1,348	41k - 100k	41,784	2,000 AVAX	8.5

Conclusion

Today’s blockchain ecosystem makes validator roles and privileges inaccessible to retail—this is both a feature and a flaw. The high barrier of entry makes attacks on the blockchain expensive and unfeasible.

However, it has made the chain more centralized as only a handful of institutions can afford the hardware and initial capital required. The top validator wallets are also controlled by the foundation responsible for the blockchain, which raises a lot of questions.

Lowering the barrier of entry for validators and offering better incentives would achieve a higher degree of decentralization while maintaining chain security. As crypto gathers more adoption, we cant wait to see what tomorrow holds.