Ethereum and Solana both set new highs for staking participation during the third quarter of 2026, even as the returns available to stakers declined, according to Bitwise’s latest quarterly staking analysis.
Growing amounts of capital locked into securing the networks diluted individual rewards, while the bulk of those rewards continued to come from newly created tokens rather than transaction-related activity.
On Ethereum, the amount of ETH held by active validators climbed to a record 43.80 million tokens, equal to 35.9% of the total circulating supply.
Net inflows totaled 1.99 million ETH for the quarter, marking the sixth consecutive period of positive growth.
Cumulative staking additions for the first nine months of the year reached 7.96 million ETH—more than six times the volume seen in the same period a year earlier.
Institutional participants drove much of the expansion.
Bitmine, the Ethereum treasury firm associated with Tom Lee, increased its staked holdings from roughly 410,000 ETH in late 2025 to 5.07 million ETH by late September.
The higher participation level pushed average annualized gross staking yields down to 2.63% from 2.81% in the previous quarter.
Protocol-issued consensus rewards accounted for 96.3% of the total yield (2.53 percentage points), while priority fees and maximal extractable value contributed only a marginal 0.10 percentage points.
As the pool of staked ETH expands, the same stream of rewards is shared among more participants, lowering the return on each token.
Ethereum network revenue from fees and MEV also fell, dropping to approximately $40.6 million from $63 million in the second quarter.
The network processed 199.32 million transactions—still elevated relative to the prior year—yet users paid less per transaction following capacity increases from earlier upgrades.
Solana exhibited a similar pattern. Active stake rose to a record 440.5 million SOL, or 69% of total supply, after adding about 13.4 million SOL during the quarter.
Gross staking yields slipped to 5.99% from 6.38%.
Roughly 90% of Solana’s yield derives from new token issuance under its disinflationary schedule, which reduces issuance by 15% annually toward a long-term floor.
Higher network fees provided only a partial offset.
Solana handled a record 14.2 billion non-vote transactions, a 45% increase from the prior quarter, while transaction fee revenue climbed to $76 million.
Application-level revenue also rose sharply.
The network’s higher throughput and lower latency supported this activity, even as average transaction costs remained relatively stable.
Validator counts declined on both networks for different reasons.
Ethereum’s active validator set fell from around 1.1 million to roughly 881,000 following the Pectra upgrade, which enabled operators to consolidate multiple validators into fewer, higher-balance ones while maintaining the same amount of secured ETH.
Solana’s validator count dropped from 696 to 659 under ongoing cost pressures, continuing a longer-term contraction of about 30% over the past year as smaller operators exited.
Bitwise’s report frames the quarter as one in which proof-of-stake networks grew more capable and cheaper to use by design.
Increased staking strengthens economic security for the expanding volume of on-chain activity—including tokenized equities and other traditional assets—yet the dominance of issuance-funded rewards means non-staking holders face dilution while yields compress as participation rises. The data highlight a maturing infrastructure where security commitments expand even as per-token returns moderate.
