Ethereum & Solana Still Rule Staking—But These New Challengers Are Coming for Their Crown (July 2025)

Crypto's staking wars just got hotter. Ethereum and Solana continue to dominate locked value, but hungry upstarts are slicing into their market share—and TradFi dinosaurs are still scratching their heads over 'internet bonds.'

The incumbents aren't sweating... yet.

Ethereum's proof-of-stake empire keeps growing despite gas fee whiplash, while Solana's rebuild after the 2022 crash turned it into a staking powerhouse. But watch the underdogs: at least three new chains have doubled their staked value since January by offering APYs that'd make a hedge fund manager blush (if they understood how staking works).

Meanwhile, Wall Street 'experts' still can't decide if staking is genius passive income or a regulatory time bomb—but hey, at least they've stopped calling it 'cloud mining 2.0.' Progress.

Ethereum (ETH) is the undisputed champion in the value staked, with an astounding $93.1 billion locked up in staking. ethereum also has a comparatively low reward rate of 2.98%, but its commanding market value and decades-long reputation in its network place it in the preferred list of institutional and retail stakers. 

Next in line after Ethereum is Solana (SOL), which has solidified its market share with a big stake of $61.4 billion and an attractive 7.28% reward rate.

SUI and BNB Chain Show Solid Staking Activity Just Below Ethereum & Solana

In the third place after Ethereum and solana is SUI. SUI has a stake of $22.3 billion, a reward rate of 2.31%, which indicates its popularity among users and developers. Being a recent arrival, SUI has already found its way up the dApps hierarchy due to its object-oriented data model and scalable dApps.

BNB Chain comes fourth with $20.2 billion value in stakes and a reward rate of 1.22%. It implies great trust in its ecosystem, which is mainly caused by the usefulness of the Binance ecosystem and the current growth in the DeFi and GameFi applications on BNB Smart Chain.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Cardano (ADA) Maintain Competitive Stakes

One of the new decentralized derivatives platforms, Hyperliquid (HYPE), has amassed over $16.4 billion worth of staking, providing a small 2.29% incentive. Its very quick success indicates the demand in the market for innovative DEXs and perpetuals that offer on-chain transparency.

Cardano (ADA) is a stable participant in the world of staking with a total of $13 billion in value locked. With a 2.52% reward rate, ADA has taken its time to develop steadily and has a solid academic backing, encouraging a long-term belief in its protocol.

Tron, Bitcoin, and Aptos Expand Their Share

Tron (TRX) has $12.1 billion staked, with a 3.42 percent annualized yield, demonstrating its consistent control in managing large-volume stablecoin transactions and regional use in Asia.

Remarkably, Bitcoin (BTC) has joined the staking market with a value of $6.36 billion, but without the rewards rate. This is probably wrapped or synthetic BTC staked through third-party protocols, and not Bitcoin staking.

Aptos (APT), a LAYER 1 project that is scalable and safe, has a staked value of $3.92B and a high reward of 7%. It is compelling developers of the next generation of DeFi and NFTs by using its Move language and modular infrastructure.

Avalanche, Polkadot, and Hedera Hold Firm

Both Avalanche (AVAX) and Polkadot (DOT) are also strongly positioned in staking, with a total amount of locked funds being $3.89B and $2.91B respectively. AVAX achieved the same reward rate as Solana, 7.28%, and DOT attains 11.8%.

Hedera (HBAR) has a staked value of $2.57B, and a close-to-zero reward rate of 0.03%. Although it has a low yield, it is still relevant in supply chain and payment solutions.

Rising Projects: Bittensor, Story Protocol, and Sei

Bittensor (TAO) is one of the newer projects, having more than $2.25 billion staked and a reward rate higher than any other listed token of 15.5%. TAO is a protocol aimed at AI; it presents itself as a decentralized machine learning and innovation-driven roadmap.

IP is a potential competitor in Web3 intellectual property ecosystems, with a sustainable staking reward of 7.13 percent and a portfolio of $1.36 billion.

Last but not least is SEI (SEI) with $1.29B worth of staked value and a decent yield of 5.47 percent, which is becoming well-liked as a Layer 1 designed with high-efficiency DeFi trading.