Staking has been perceived in the crypto community for quite a long time as a fairly easy way to generate income by locking up your assets for a while. It works as follows: the user participates in the network and gets rewarded for it. However, often the percentage of income declared in advance is reduced to a multiple of a lower one, RBC writes.
The fact is that the profit is not fixed and directly depends on the number of participants. The more funds are in steaking, the lower the income per participant. This is a basic principle embedded in the economics of the network.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, at the end of April 2026, there are about 40 million ETH (ether coins) in staking, and the number of validators exceeds 912 thousand. At these values, the current yield is about 3.0% per annum.
This is significantly lower than the levels of the first years after the transition to Proof-of-Stake, when the yield could exceed 5-6%. The decline was not due to a drop in activity, but due to an increase in the number of participants.
What the income from steaking is made up of
The validator’s income is made up of two parts. The first is the basic remuneration for block validation. It is calculated based on the total amount of staked funds and decreases as it grows.
The second part is transaction fees and additional income from MEV (maximum extractable value – additional profit that validators, miners and so on get by including, excluding or changing the order of transactions when creating a new block). These payments depend on network activity and are not stable.
According to Flashbots, the share of MEVs in validators’ revenue can vary significantly depending on market conditions. During periods of high activity it increases, but on average it does not compensate for the decrease in the base yield.
What is “liquidity staking”
A separate influence is the development of liquid staking. Protocols like Lido have simplified the entry into steaking: the user no longer needs to run their own validator and have 32 ETH. Assets are transferred to the protocol and in return the user receives a liquid token. In essence, he does not block his assets.
This has dramatically increased the availability of the tool and accelerated capital inflows. According to The Defiant citing Dune Analytics, Lido controls about 24% of all staked ETH.
Rising participation is driving yields down to near-market average levels. Staking ceases to provide an early entry premium and becomes the prime rate for participation in the network. The stated yield is almost always different from the actual yield. If the user works through a provider, part of the revenue is retained in the form of a commission. At Lido, it is 10% of the validators’ remuneration.
With a base yield of about 3%, this reduces the final rate to about 2.7% per annum. Additionally, the return depends on network activity. Commissions and MEVs are not guaranteed. In periods of low load, their share is reduced and the resulting yield is lower.
Income is also affected by inflation
Inflation is another factor. The reward is paid in native tokens. If the supply grows faster than the price, the real return in dollars is lower.
In Ethereum, the situation is partially compensated by the mechanism of commission burning (EIP-1559). In some periods the network becomes deflationary, but this depends on activity and does not happen all the time. The current dynamics shows that profitability will decrease as the share of staked funds grows.
The network model initially assumes this behavior: as the number of validators increases, the reward per participant decreases. This allows maintaining a balance between network security and economic efficiency.
Profitability will continue to decline
At around 39 million ETH in staking, the market is already in a mature phase. Further growth in participation will lead to a gradual decline in yield. At the same time, it cannot fall to zero. If the yield becomes too low, part of the participants will leave the staking and the balance will be restored.
In essence, this means that steaking ceases to be an instrument of increased profitability. It turns into a basic infrastructure function with income close to the minimum level required for validators to operate.
