Ethereum Staking Yield Falls to 2.63% with Record 43.8 Million ETH

The average annual staking yield for Ethereum in the third quarter was 2.63 percent, down from 2.81 percent in the previous quarter. The volume of locked ETH reached a record 43.8 million coins, corresponding to 35.9 percent of the total supply. The net inflow for the quarter was 1.99 million ETH, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of positive flows. In the first nine months of 2026, 7.96 million ETH were staked. More than 96 percent of the staking income was received in the form of newly issued coins, with the remainder coming from MEV and priority fees. Ethereum's network revenue decreased to $40.6 million from $63 million in the second quarter. During the quarter, fees and MEV brought in 18,210 ETH, or about 198 ETH per day compared to 331 ETH in the second quarter.

Researchers at Bitwise linked the inflow of funds to institutional staking. A prime example was BitMine, chaired by Tom Lee: its stake grew by more than 1,000 percent, from 410,000 ETH in December to 5.07 million ETH by September 27. Lee stated at the Token2049 conference in Singapore that BitMine will cease purchases upon reaching 5 percent of the total ETH supply and may sell staking rewards to avoid exceeding the threshold. About 84 percent of the company's treasury is staked through MAVAN, which at a seven-day yield of 2.63 percent should bring in $363 million annually. The number of Ethereum validators decreased from approximately 1.1 million to 881,000 following the Pectra update, which raised the limit for a single validator to 2,048 ETH. Bitwise reduced the number of validators on Lido from 8,000 to 125. The waiting time for new stakers fell from 70 days in February to 25 days by the end of the quarter. MetaMask withdrew about 523,000 ETH from Lido validators following a security incident reported on September 30, and the exit queue from Ethereum peaked at 850,736 ETH.

Solana also set a record: the volume of active staking reached 440.5 million SOL, or 69 percent of the supply. The gross yield decreased to 5.99 percent from 6.38 percent. New issuance accounted for about 90 percent of the total yield. The number of active validators decreased to 659 from 696, roughly 30 percent less than a year ago due to cost pressures. Meanwhile, activity on the Solana network increased: it processed a record 14.2 billion non-voting transactions, up 45 percent from the previous quarter. Fees rose by 49 percent to $76 million equivalent, mainly due to meme coin trading. Trading volume of tokenized stocks on Solana amounted to $6.93 billion, up 45 percent. According to Bitwise, NEAR's staking share was 46 percent with a yield of 4.87 percent, while in Hyperliquid, the yield on approximately 437.5 million HYPE in staking was 2.24 percent.