Out of this project, for now, got 600 DNA waited for the validation of the whole week and have sync it daily so that when the times comes for validation I only have few blocks to sync, but today after upgrading my nodes not getting any peers, I missed the validation now and until now it's not syncing although I have a good connection, this is one issue that should be addressed if devs wants to see positive reviews and movement of adoption.
I have been able to validate 5 times in a row without problems and fail the last two times because of the same connection problems, peers or not sending in time. My account was Zombie...
It's common in this testnet phase, the software is correcting bugs and for that you have to report them. Today's validation has been perfect in my case and I don't have the problems I had before.
Don't give up! In six days you can validate again and continue with your mining, good luck.