# Delegation period

Any potential validators can indicate their intention to be a validator candidate. Their candidacies are made public to all delegators, and a delegator in turn submits a list of any number of candidates that it supports. In the next epoch, a certain number of validators having the most KAI backing get elected and become active. There are no particular requirements for a KAI holder to become a delegator, though we expect each delegator to carefully track the performance and reputation of validators.

Once the delegation period ends, the DPOS election mechanism takes the delegator and their associated votes as input, and outputs a set of validators of the required size, that maximizes the stake backing of any validator, and that makes the stakes backing validators as evenly distributed as possible. The objectives of this election mechanism are to maximize the security of the network, and achieve fair representation of the delegators.<br>


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.kardiachain.io/docs/archived-docs/staking-overview/delegation-period.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.