Validators secure both the EVM and Cosmos lanes at once — there's one set of operators and one bonded stake behind every transaction, whichever lane it's on.
Holders delegate CRYPTOS to validators to help secure the chain and earn a share of rewards. Validator voting power is proportional to total stake delegated, the standard Cosmos model.
Day-to-day proposals are decided by stake-weighted vote, the same as staking power. For the small set of emergency actions a chain occasionally needs — pausing a compromised module, for instance — Cryptos adds a second path: a 9-of-15 multisig held across validator operators, deliberately harder to assemble than a routine vote and reserved for situations where waiting out a normal governance period isn't an option.
Validator signing goes through a dedicated key service rather than a local keyfile on the node itself. The consensus node asks the key service to sign, over an authenticated connection, and the key material never leaves that service — so compromising a validator's host doesn't hand an attacker its signing key.
Detailed hardware and software requirements for mainnet validators are still being finalized ahead of launch. Testnet-gamma is live today for anyone who wants to run a node and get familiar with the setup before mainnet opens.