For many cryptocurrency owners, staking is an excellent way to put assets to work rather than just leaving them stored up in a cryptowallet. By committing your assets to support a blockchain network, you can generate rewards and safeguard cryptocurrency platforms for other users. Not all networks are created equal though, and there are varying levels of reward and risk. At BanklessTimes.com we’ve ranked the ten most staked cryptocurrencies by market cap:
1. Ethereum
Ethereum is the most staked cryptocurrency, in large part because staking Ethereum is so straightforward. Anyone can become a validator by simply placing 32 ETH into a staking contract and activating validator software. Even the non-technical minded can do this through a CEX with just one click of a button. There are currently 601,977 validators on Ethereum and the platform has a staking market cap of $36,858,561,747, which is more than four times the amount of its largest competitor.
2. Solana
Solana has recently surged in popularity, driven by the fact that its native cryptocurrency SOL has experienced a significant growth in value. With a market price of $22.23, SOL is a reasonable investment and has long appealed to users for its lightning-fast transaction speeds and low fees. Solana has a staking ratio of 70.51% and rewards average at 6.8% per annum.
3. Cardano
Cardano has long been considered a safe investment choice thanks to the decentralised team of scientists, engineers and thought-leaders that lent their minds and rigorous testing to this open-source blockchain. Every ada holder has a stake in the network and ada can be delegated to a stake pool to earn rewards.
4. Aptos
Aptos has only recently been launched, but the fact it has three former Meta employees behind it has generated something of a buzz. The team behind Aptos has significant experience on the Diem stablecoin project and the platform uses accessible applications from Meta’s own programming language, Rust. With investors keen to get on board, Aptos already has a staking market cap of $8,089,418,162.
5. BNB Chain
You’ll need a good degree of technical knowledge to invest in BNB Chain. The company formerly known as Binance Smart Chain only takes on 21 validators at a time and in order to be considered you’ll need to spin up a hardware node with the required specs, run a full BSC node, and stake a minimum of 10,000. This will only secure you a place as an elected candidate though; to start producing blocks you will need to be voted in, with candidates changing every 24 hours.
6. Sui
Sui is another cryptocurrency platform still at the integration stage, but attracting plenty of investors with its goal of making digital asset ownership accessible to everyone. The new project is the effort of Mysten Lab’s, a company founded by ex-employees of Meta’s Project Libra. The team has already generated a staking market cap of $7,062,537,071.
7. Avalanche
Avalanche differs from other cryptocurrency platforms in that fees are not directed to validators but rather burned. Burning increases the scarcity of its currency, AVAX, which is counterbalanced by the minting process in order to assure the longevity of the network. With a staking market cap of $3,627,678,874 it must be doing something right.
8. Polygon
Ethereum’s popularity has added many transactions to the Ethereum blockchain, which can make fees rise to the point at which smaller transactions are unviable. Polygon works by running alongside the Ethereum blockchain to provide faster transactions and lower fees to users.
9. Tron
Tron is dedicated to decentralising the internet and users looking to stake TRX can choose to vote on Super Representatives, which is perceived as easy with minimal risk, or alternatively for a fee of 9,999 TRX they can pay to participate in the election for Super Representative, which requires a certain level of technical expertise.
10. Polkadot
Polkadot is a protocol that connects previously incompatible blockchains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin and allows value and data to be sent across them. The amount to stake is dynamic, but often sits around the 80 DOT mark. Choose your validators carefully on this platform – if they don’t behave you’ll end up losing DOT.
“Ethereum remains the most popular cryptocurrency for staking largely because of its accessibility, with users able to stake on a centralised exchange regardless of technical ability. It’s also great to see Sui and Aptos, both still in the integration stage, climb up the rankings so quickly. The fact that investors are still keen to stake on new currencies is fantastic news for the industry”.Jonathan Merry, CEO of Bankless Times
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