# Network Maintainers

Welcome to the Neoxi Maintainers section. Maintainers are very important participants in the Neoxi Ecosystem, maintaining the security, performance, and availability of the network for other participants.\
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Validator[​](https://docs.venom.foundation/maintain/network-maintainers#validator)

The validator plays an essential role in maintaining the security of the network through staking Neoxi tokens and actively participating in consensus with other validators. Using the consensus algorithm, the validator proposes candidate blocks and votes on blocks proposed by other validators. Once the voting threshold is reached, the proposed block is added to the chain. This process is facilitated by an overlay network created by the network-layer protocol, which connects the validators.

Validators are incentivized to participate in the block production process because each included block provides a reward.

Masterchain validators also play an essential role in maintaining the security of the masterchain network. Through the creation of master-blocks, they enable shardchains to share messages, the state of contracts, and the network sharding configuration with other shardchains.

### Delegator[​](https://docs.venom.foundation/maintain/network-maintainers#delegator) <a href="#delegator" id="delegator"></a>

Delegators play an important part in the decentralization of the network. By staking to validators, they enhance network security and offer direction to the Elector's algorithm on which validators should move forward to the next round. This enables low stake validators who are well-regarded by the community to accumulate funds in their pools and become validators.

![Pools](https://docs.venom.foundation/assets/images/pools-8dc93fa4f60efa13dbb974cbdae82752.png)

Since Neoxi is not an nPoS-based blockchain, any participant with enough tokens can become a validator, even if they haven't been nominated by other participants.

Validators share rewards in Nexi tokens with delegators based on their shares, but they also share risks. If a validator node is offline during validation, the algorithm may penalize them by slashing their stake. In this case, the delegator's stake may also be reduced.
