What is Staking?

Staking is the process by which holders of the native token of a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain—such as Ethereum, Solana, or Polkadot—can participate in the network’s consensus1 by locking up a certain amount of their holdings. This process is key to the security of a PoS blockchain because it ensures that block proposers and attesters, collectively known as validators, have a stake in the network’s integrity and are incentivized to behave with accountability.

In PoS, validators are randomly selected by consensus software to propose and attest the creation of new blocks based on their stake in the network, receiving rewards that usually consist of newly issued native tokens and transaction fees paid by network users (also denominated in the native token). Generally, the more tokens a validator stakes, the more likely they are to be assigned new validation tasks and receive rewards.