Ethereum stakers earned an average annualized 2.63% in the third quarter, down from 2.81% as staked supply reached a record 43.8 million ETH.
Issuance pays more than 96% of Ethereum’s yield
35.9% of the total ETH supply is locked up. Net inflows added 1.99 million ETH during the quarter, the sixth successive quarter of positive flows.
7.96 million ETH were staked across the first nine months of 2026. “As more ETH is staked, rewards are distributed across a larger pool, reducing the yield earned on each ETH,” Bitwise researchers wrote.
More than 96% of the yield was paid out in freshly minted ETH, with the rest coming from MEV and priority fees.
Ethereum’s network revenue declined to $40.6 million from $63 million in Q2. Fees and MEV earned 18,210 ETH during the quarter (~198 ETH per day vs. 331 ETH in Q2).
Bitwise said the inflows were fueled by institutional staking. It spotlighted BitMine, an Ethereum treasury company chaired by Tom Lee, whose stake surged more than 1,000% from 410,000 ETH in December to 5.07 million ETH on September 27.
BitMine will stop buying when it has 5% of ETH supply, Lee told the Token2049 conference in Singapore. The company could also sell its staking rewards to stay under that ceiling, he said.
According to Cryptopolitan, BitMine stakes around 84% of its treasury to its MAVAN network. The stake is expected to generate $363 million annually with a 2.63% seven-day yield.
Solana locks up 69% of supply as its yield eases to 5.99%
Ethereum’s validator count fell while stake rose. The Pectra upgrade, which raised the cap for one validator to 2,048 ETH, led to a fall in the number of active validators from around 1.1 million to about 881,000, as operators folded them together.
Bitwise is trimming the number of validators it operates on Lido from around 8,000 to 125. Entry wait for new stakers declined from about 70 days in February to about 25 days at quarter end.
MetaMask withdrew around 523,000 ETH from Lido validators following a security incident disclosed on September 30, Cryptopolitan reported earlier this month. The exits pushed Ethereum’s exit queue to a peak of 850,736 ETH.
Solana also set a new record. Active stake reached 440.5 million SOL or 69% of supply.
Gross yield waned to 5.99% from 6.38%.
Solana’s new issuance made up about 90% of the returns. Active validators shrank to 659 from 696 under cost pressure, about 30% less than a year ago.
Solana activity went the other way. The network processed a record 14.2 billion non-vote transactions, up 45% on the quarter, while fees climbed 49% to $76 million in dollar terms, mostly on memecoin trading.
Tokenized equity trading on Solana hit $6.93 billion, up 45%. Bitwise had NEAR at 46% staked with a 4.87% yield, and Hyperliquid had a 2.24% yield on about 437.5M HYPE staked.
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