Ripples of Potential

To proliferate, you can choose any permanent that has a counter, including ones controlled by opponents. You can choose any player who has a counter, including opponents. You can't choose cards in any zone other than the battlefield, even if they have counters on them.

If a player or permanent has more than one kind of counter on it, and you choose for it to get additional counters, it must get one of each kind of counter it already has. You can't have it get just one kind of counter it already has and not the others.

Players can respond to a spell or ability whose effect includes proliferating. Once that spell or ability starts to resolve, however, and its controller chooses which permanents and players will get new counters, it's too late for anyone to respond.

Phased-out permanents are treated as though they don't exist. They can't be the target of spells or abilities, their static abilities have no effect on the game, their triggered abilities can't trigger, they can't attack or block, and so on.

An attacking or blocking creature that phases out is removed from combat.

An ability that triggers "Whenever you proliferate" triggers even if you chose no permanents or players while doing so.

A phased-out token will phase in at the beginning of its controller's untap step just like a nontoken permanent would.

Phasing out doesn't cause any "leaves the battlefield" abilities to trigger. Similarly, phasing in won't cause any "enters the battlefield" abilities to trigger.

You don't have to choose every permanent or player that has a counter, only the ones you want to add another counter to. Since "any number" includes zero, you don't have to choose any permanents at all, and you don't have to choose any players at all.