Ethereum Staking Statistics 2026: Yields, Validators, Queues and Institutions

Ethereum staking grew in 2026 even as prices fell and yields dropped. About 43.7 million ETH is now staked, or 35.8 percent of supply, based on data checked on 5 October 2026.

Most of the growth came from institutions. Treasury companies, ETFs and custodians now hold more than a third of staked ETH.

This article draws on six sources to cover totals, validators, yields, queues, large stakers, funds, liquid staking, restaking, MEV, issuance and a survey of solo stakers. Figures come from different dates, so each one is tied to its time frame.

How Much ETH Is Staked in 2026?

Validators hold 43.7 million ETH as of 5 October 2026. That is 35.8 percent of a supply near 122 million ETH, worth about $118 billion at $2,700 per ETH.

The total started the year at 36.3 million ETH. It reached 38.9 million by 20 May and 43.1 million by 30 June, based on Lido’s first-half report.

That is a 19 percent rise in six months, a period in which ETH lost 47 percent of its dollar value. Stakers kept adding ETH while the price fell.

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Be careful with claims that more than half of all ETH is staked. CoinDesk reported that those claims compare lifetime deposits with past issuance, which is misleading. The live share is just under 36 percent.

Sources do not match exactly. VaultNova cited 42.4 million ETH, or 34.7 percent, for August. Differences come from the dates and data providers each report uses.

Validator Count Falls to About 868,000

Ethereum has 868,121 active validators. That is down from about 975,000 in January and a peak near 1.1 million in mid-2025.

The count fell while staked ETH rose. Datawallet calculates that the average validator now holds about 50 ETH, well above the old 32 ETH limit.

The Pectra upgrade in May 2025 raised the maximum balance of one validator from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. Operators can now merge many validators into one. Rewards above 32 ETH keep counting toward the merged validator.

On 18 September, Lido began its largest merger yet. Its node operators are folding more than 265,000 validators into about 4,000. Lido expects this to cut the network’s validator count by about a third.

Fewer validators means fewer signatures for each node to process. That eases hardware needs and supports plans to make transactions final sooner. Counts still vary by source, as one February report listed more than 1.1 million validators.

Staking Yield Settles Near 2.6 Percent

The network staking rate is about 2.63 percent a year before provider fees. It was about 2.8 percent in January and 2.78 percent in May.

Yield falls as stake grows. The reward budget rises with the square root of staked ETH, so doubling the stake lifts the budget by only about 41 percent. Each validator gets a smaller share.

Consensus rewards account for about 2.5 percent. The rest comes from priority fees and MEV, which are thin this quarter. Base fees have often sat near 1 gwei.

What you earn depends on how you stake. Solo validators keep the full rate. A liquid staking protocol that takes 10 percent of rewards leaves about 2.3 percent, though stETH paid close to 2.2 percent in August.

At 2.6 percent, staking 10 ETH for a year earns about 0.26 ETH. That is roughly $700 at $2,700 per ETH. One February report cited 3.5 to 4.2 percent, which is higher than every other source here, so read yield ranges with care.

Entry and Exit Queues Swing Sharply

Ethereum limits stake entering or leaving to 256 ETH per epoch. That works out to about 57,600 ETH a day in each direction. Queues build when more than that tries to move.

The entry queue held 3.59 million ETH on 20 May, a wait of 62 days and 8 hours. By 5 October it had fallen to 1.46 million ETH, or about 25 days.

Exits were close to zero for most of the year. In January the exit queue fell to 32 ETH, down from a peak of about 2.67 million ETH in September 2025.

That changed on 30 September. MetaMask disclosed a security incident in its staking setup and began pulling validators out of Lido as a precaution.

The exit queue peaked near 851,000 ETH on 2 October and stood at 786,000 ETH on 5 October. Leaving takes about 14 days in the queue, followed by roughly a week for the withdrawal sweep.

Lido expects the affected ETH to be staked again, and says a full round trip could take up to 45 days. Kiln’s precautionary exit in September 2025 pushed the queue past 2.6 million ETH. Operator security now moves queues as much as market mood does.

Institutions Hold More Than a Third of Staked ETH

Institutions took most of the 6.8 million ETH added to staking in the first half. Their share rose from 25.9 percent to 35.3 percent of all staked ETH, according to Lido’s report.

This group covers treasury companies, ETFs and custodians. Datawallet reports that more than 7 million ETH has entered staking in 2026.

Lido is still the largest entity, with 9.13 million ETH at the end of June. Its share fell from 23.93 percent to 21.18 percent in six months, far below its 32 percent peak in 2023.

Lido captured under 6 percent of the network’s net growth. Most new money went to custodians, exchanges and in-house validators.

BitMine is second at 11.5 percent, from a position that did not exist a year earlier. Coinbase holds 10.9 percent and Binance 7.9 percent.

One concentration problem has eased while another has grown. Lido is near a fifth of staked ETH, but a single treasury company now holds more than a tenth.

Treasury Companies and ETFs Add Staking

BitMine’s 28 September update lists 6,001,302 ETH, or 4.9 percent of supply. Of that, 5,067,309 ETH is staked, about 84 percent. Its seven-day yield in late September was 2.62 percent.

Bit Digital reported 164,283.8 ETH on 31 August, worth about $405.3 million. About 74,205 ETH, or 45.2 percent, was natively staked.

Its staking rewards were 167.7 ETH for the period, an annualized yield of about 3.6 percent. That is above the network rate, and the company says its figures are preliminary and unaudited.

Funds are now part of the picture. On 17 March 2026 the SEC and CFTC issued an interpretation that treats protocol staking as outside the definition of a securities offering. That removed the main legal barrier to yield-paying funds.

Datawallet estimates a net yield near 1.9 percent for a fund that stakes about 87 percent of its ETH and passes on 82 percent of rewards. That is before the management fee.

Liquid Staking and Restaking

Liquid staking lets holders stake any amount and receive a token that tracks the deposit plus rewards. DefiLlama showed about 15 million ETH in these protocols, roughly a third of all staked ETH.

Lido’s stETH makes up about 62 percent of that total. Binance’s wBETH holds about 25 percent, or 3.7 million ETH, and Rocket Pool holds about 528,000 ETH.

These tokens matter for lending. Messari research found that liquid staking tokens backed over 90 percent of $4.4 billion in ETH-denominated loans on Aave, Spark and Morpho. Much of it funds leveraged staking.

Restaking has shrunk. EigenLayer, now called EigenCloud, holds about $5 billion in deposits, down from a peak near $22 billion in August 2025.

In April 2026 an attacker took about $292 million through the bridge behind Kelp DAO’s restaking token. Withdrawals spread across the sector after that.

Fees also tell the story. In early September about $10 billion in restaking deposits produced roughly $100,000 a week in fees. Liquid staking produced over $27 million.

Issuance and MEV Rewards

New ETH pays rewards to every staked ETH. With 43.7 million ETH staked, Datawallet puts annual issuance at about 1.1 million ETH, or roughly 3,000 ETH a day. That adds close to 0.9 percent to supply each year.

Burned fees used to offset most of that. Activity has moved to cheaper layer 2 networks, so the burn now covers only a small share. Supply is about 122 million ETH, up from 120.5 million at the 2022 Merge.

The issue led to a policy fight in August. EIP-8363 would burn a growing share of rewards as stake rises, bringing net issuance to zero at 60.25 million ETH staked. At today’s ratio it would roughly halve consensus rewards to about 1.2 percent.

Its authors have withdrawn it from consideration for the Hegotá upgrade. The question of how much Ethereum should pay for security is still open.

MEV-Boost adds 10 to 30 percent to base rewards. On a 2.78 percent base, that is roughly 0.28 to 0.83 percentage points. Builders are concentrated: Titan built 52.16 percent of blocks in an April snapshot, and three builders made about 92 percent.

Relays are also concentrated. Of seven major relays, only three do not censor under OFAC rules, so relay choice affects network neutrality.

What Solo Stakers Report

EthStaker’s 2026 survey drew 528 completed responses, down from 740 in 2025 and 1,023 in 2024. Of these, 382 ran validators with their own capital. The authors call the results directional, since respondents are a self-selected group that leans toward home stakers.

Most are small operators. Some 59 percent run one to five validators and 21 percent run six to fifteen. About 75 percent run solo validators, and 78 percent stake most of their ETH.

Execution clients are fairly balanced, with Nethermind at 45 percent, Geth at 33 percent and Besu at 15 percent. Consensus is less even. Lighthouse leads at 38 percent, up from 36 percent in 2024.

Of the 126 Lighthouse users, the most common reason for staying was the cost and risk of switching. Many cited slashing risk and multi-day re-syncs.

On growth, 34 percent said they do not plan to add stake, and 26 percent were undecided. The share who weigh ETH supply inflation in their decision rose from 21 percent in 2024 to 39 percent in 2026.

The top practical concerns were privacy and exposed IP addresses (33 percent), lack of tax clarity (32 percent) and client supermajority risk (29 percent).

Risks and What to Watch

Price is the largest risk. ETH fell 47 percent in the first half of 2026, which Datawallet says wiped out about eighteen years of staking income at today’s rate. Staking adds ETH but leaves the dollar value open to the market.

Operator security has become a clear risk. The MetaMask and Kiln incidents both forced mass exits. Neither reported slashing, but stakers lost rewards during the exit and re-entry cycle.

Other risks include smart contract and bridge failures, custody risk with exchanges, and policy changes. Slashing remains a tail risk for poorly run validators. In 2022, stETH fell to about 0.94 ETH during market stress.

Several upgrades may change the picture. Glamsterdam reaches the Sepolia test network on 6 October 2026, and EIP-8061 would roughly quadruple the exit limit. Datawallet estimates that the current exit queue would clear in three to four days under that limit.

The issuance debate may return as the staking ratio heads toward 40 percent. Exit times are about three weeks today, compared with more than six weeks in late 2025.

Conclusion

Ethereum staking is larger and more institutional than at any earlier point. Stake rose by about a fifth in nine months, while the network yield slipped from about 2.8 percent to 2.6 percent.

The validator count is falling as operators merge, queues swing with operator events, and restaking has cooled. Lido’s share has dropped to about a fifth, while BitMine alone holds more than a tenth.

Solo stakers remain a small, committed group. Many say the economics are tighter, and more of them now weigh issuance in their choices.

For anyone staking, the data points to a rate near 2.6 percent before fees and waits of weeks to enter or leave. Any extra yield should be seen as payment for added risk. This article is for information only and is not financial advice.

Sources

• EthStaker 2026 Staking Survey: Analysis
• Ethereum Treasury and Staking Metrics for August 2026 (Bit Digital)
• Ethereum Staking Statistics & Trends 2026 (ETH Data) (Datawallet)
• Ethereum Staking in 2026: Yield Trends, Validator Queue Dynamics, and MEV Impact Explained
• Ethereum Staking Rate Hits 30% in 2026: Security Layer Shift (ChainLabo)
• Ethereum Staking in 2026: A Beginner’s Guide to Rewards and Risks (VaultNova)