What Ethereum staking really pays

Ethereum pays about 2.473% a year to stakers. That figure does not appear on any platform's marketing page, and its absence is not an oversight — it is the number against which every product's take becomes visible.

Lido publishes the formula it uses: user APR equals protocol APR times one minus the fee. Its live API returns the user APR, and its fee is 10%. Dividing 2.226 by 0.9 gives 2.473% — the protocol rate, derived from a competitor's own honest disclosure.

That this arithmetic is necessary at all is the finding. Every platform quotes its own net number, and net numbers cannot be compared without the gross one.

• Solo staking: 2.473%. No commission to anyone. Requires 32 ETH and reliable operation.
• Lido: 10% of yield, so about 2.226%. Advertised net, formula documented, API matches the front end. Genuinely honest disclosure.
• Kraken: its own support page states the in-app APYs do not include Kraken's commission — so the number displayed is not the number received, and the commission separating them is not shown alongside it.
• Coinbase: about 1.75% to retail. Against 2.473%, that is an implied take of roughly 29%, published nowhere. You have to derive the gross figure and divide.

Ethereum's issuance falls as the total amount staked rises, and a great deal is staked. The reward is spread across more validators, so the per-validator rate compresses. A high staking participation rate is a sign of a secure network and a low yield, and those are the same fact.

It also means the rate is not going back to early levels while participation stays high. Any product promising materially more than the network pays is either taking risk you have not priced or paying you out of something other than staking.

At around 2.2% net, the difference between the better providers is tens of basis points — on $10,000 staked, a few tens of dollars a year. The difference between providers on custody, exit liquidity and disclosure is far larger in expected terms.

So the ranking that matters is not the yield table. It is: who holds the keys, can you exit when you want, and does the platform tell you what it takes? That is how our staking platforms rating is weighted.

2.473% is a yield on a volatile asset. Ethereum can move that much in an hour. Staking is not a way to earn a return on money; it is a way to earn slightly more of an asset you have already decided to hold.

If the yield is the reason you are holding, the yield is too small to be the reason.

At 2.2%, the staking decision is roughly a hundredth as important as the decision to hold ETH at all.

Ethereum pays about 2.473% gross. Solo staking keeps all of it; Lido returns about 2.226% and documents the formula; Coinbase pays retail roughly 1.75% and does not publish its take. Compare providers on custody, exit and disclosure rather than on a yield spread measured in basis points.