# Become a Kima validator

The Kima blockchain relies on a network of validator nodes for its security and consensus. KIMA tokens are distributed to validators as an incentive for their participation in the network.

You can read more about both Kima's incentive model and its innovative security architecture in the [White Paper](https://docs.kima.network/kima-whitepaper-1)

Two areas of Kima's security architecture stand out:

* Threshold signature schemes (TSSs) allow a group of participants (“cosigners”) to securely generate and control the secret signing key for a digital signature scheme, such that a certain threshold (e.g. 2-out-of-3 or 7-out-of-10) cosigners must participate in, and agree upon, the signing protocol in order to generate a signature.
* To further complement security, Kima wardens run the threshold signature scheme inside an SGX enclave, thus the TSS key-shares are not directly accessible to the wardens or their system administrators.

For this reason, would-be validators need to ensure that they either have access to a machine that is compliant with the relevant SGX requirements, either by:

* Owning the relevant hardware
* Running their node on [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/intel-sgx-based-confidential-computing-vms-now-available-on-azure-dedicated-hosts/_)
* Other enclave technologies such as [AMD SEV-SNP](https://www.amd.com/en/developer/sev.html) may be supported in the future. Please contact us if you are interested in other enclave architectures.

Read the [validator requirements page](/kima-network/become-a-kima-validator/hardware-and-operating-system-requirements.md) for more details.

If you have questions about setup, or would prefer to be guided through the process, get in touch here.


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