Top 20 cryptocurrencies with the most value being staked as of June 21, 2024

The staking values of both Solana and Cardano made up around 70 percent of their circulating supply, a percentage significantly higher than for Ethereum. This difference stems from how the cryptocurrencies are created. Ethereum 1.0, similar to Bitcoin, relies on a mechanism called "Proof-of-Work" or PoW, and is similar to mining: Lots of processing power is used to verify transactions on the blockchain and those who do all that verification work — the "miners" — get rewarded with a predetermined amount of crypto. As this process became more energy-consuming and too complicated for individuals to perform — alongside the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that demanded even more verifications — another mechanism appeared: "Proof-of-Stake" or POS. Here, people — or "validators" — commit — or "stake" — their own cryptocurrency in an automated system — often a wallet, where people will simply hold their crypto — which at certain times will randomly pick a person who gets to validate a batch of blockchain transactions. Same as before, validation leads to new cryptocurrency as a reward — essentially acting as interest after initial investment. As the amount of crypto needed can be considerable, there are also so-called "staking pools" where groups of people gather the coins needed for — or "delegate" to — an external validator, and still get the rewards. Cardano and Solana only use proof of stake, whereas the relatively new Ethereum 2.0 is also relying on it.