What do you know about staking?
Like a lot of things in crypto, staking can be a complicated idea or a simple one depending on how many levels of understanding you want to unlock. For a lot of traders and investors, knowing that staking is a way of earning rewards for holding certain cryptocurrencies is the key takeaway. But even if you’re just looking to earn some staking rewards, it’s useful to understand at least a little bit about how and why it works the way it does.
How does staking work?
If a cryptocurrency you own allows staking — current options include Tezos, Cosmos, and now Ethereum (via the new ETH2 upgrade) — you can “stake” some of your holdings and earn a percentage-rate reward over time. This usually happens via a “staking pool” which you can think of as being similar to an interest-bearing savings account.
The reason your crypto earns rewards while staked is because the blockchain puts it to work. Cryptocurrencies that allow staking use a “consensus mechanism” called Proof of Stake, which is the way they ensure that all transactions are verified and secured without a bank or payment processor in the middle. Your crypto, if you choose to stake it, becomes part of that process.
