Thousand Validators Program

The Thousand Validators Program is an initiative by Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies to use the funds held by both organizations to nominate validators in the community. It serves two major purposes: 1) to give validators a structured on-ramp to join the active set of validators on Kusama and Polkadot and 2) to further decentralize the validator active set. See the official link.

For a detailed run-through of how to start a node with the Thousand Validators Program, check out the 2-part video presentation from Paradox, a well-respected community member.