# Witnesses Nodes

Oort’s mainnet consensus operates on a Proof of Stake (PoS) model, where blocks are validated by witnesses (validators) who must stake a specified amount of $OORT tokens to participate.&#x20;

To qualify as a witness, an account must&#x20;

1. run a OORT witness node on a local or cloud machine that met the minimum hardware requirement.
2. &#x20;create a staking pool which holds a total of 500,000 $OORT tokens. The pool's creator is required to directly stake 200,000 $OORT tokens from his own account, while the remaining 300,000 tokens can be contributed by the community.&#x20;