Google "liquid staking APY" and you'll see numbers that don't quite match reality. Some sites quote gross rates. Some quote pre-fee rates. Some quote a borrowed-position loop and call it the baseline. Here's what the boring, un-optimised, unlevered version actually pays.
Everything below is approximate. Rates move constantly, and no protocol can promise a rate stays where it was last month.
The headline numbers, honestly
On Ethereum, liquid staking through the big providers has paid roughly 2.5-4.5% APY over the past couple of years, after fees. The gross rate before the protocol takes its cut is closer to 3-5%, which lines up with what regular Ethereum staking pays. See how staking rewards work if the source of that yield is fuzzy.
On Solana, providers like Jito and Marinade have paid roughly 5-7% net after fees. Higher than Ethereum, but Solana's inflation rate is higher too, which changes the real-yield picture.
What a year looks like in dollars
Take a hypothetical 2 ETH stake at a hypothetical price of $3,000 — call it $6,000 in staking. At a 3.5% net APY, that's about $210 of ETH earned across the year. Not a life-changer.
| Stake size | Net APY (illustrative) | Annual earn |
|---|---|---|
| 1 ETH | 3.5% | ~0.035 ETH |
| 10 ETH | 3.5% | ~0.35 ETH |
| 100 SOL | 6% | ~6 SOL |
| 1,000 SOL | 6% | ~60 SOL |
Those figures are token-denominated. Convert them to dollars and the token price does most of the talking. A 3.5% yield on ETH that dropped 40% still leaves you worse off in dollars than you started. The reverse is also true — a good price year makes the yield look modest by comparison.
Where the extra comes from
People who post screenshots of double-digit yields usually got there one of three ways.
- Lending the liquid staking token, which can add 0.3-1.5% (approximate) on top.
- Providing liquidity in a stable pool, which can add trading fees and reward tokens.
- Looping the position with borrowed capital, which amplifies both yield and risk.
Adding all three isn't magic — it's borrowed exposure plus counterparty risk plus depeg risk. The extra 3-5% comes with real ways to lose the base capital, not just the extra yield. Our risk breakdown covers what those failures look like in practice.
The numbers nobody quotes
Gas fees eat a small slice on Ethereum, especially if you claim or restake often. Solana fees are usually a rounding error. Taxes vary widely by country and can turn a headline APY into a much smaller net yield — many jurisdictions treat staking rewards as income at the moment they're received. Talk to someone who knows your local rules.
There's also the opportunity cost of holding a volatile asset in the first place. A 4% yield in a currency that halves in value hasn't made you money. That framing gets ignored a lot when APYs are being shown off.
A quick way to sanity check any quoted yield
If a service quotes a yield above 8% on plain liquid staking of a major asset, look for what's actually going on. It usually falls into one of these buckets:
- Rewards paid in a bonus token whose price could go anywhere.
- A short promotional window before the rate resets.
- Borrowed positions baked into the number without saying so.
- A smaller network with real security trade-offs.
None of these are automatically bad. They're just not the same product as plain vanilla staking. If you want to sanity-check your own numbers, our rewards calculator handles the compounding math without any embellishment.
A realistic answer to how much you can earn from liquid staking
Plain vanilla, unlevered liquid staking on a major asset pays somewhere in the low single digits. That's it. The DeFi world offers ways to push that higher, but every push adds a way for the whole position to end the year in the red. For most people, treating liquid staking as a slow, boring source of yield — not a growth strategy — matches the reality of what it actually pays.