The staking values of both Solana and Cardano made up around 70 percent of their circulating supply, a percentage significantly higher than for Ethereum. This difference stems from how the cryptocurrencies are created. Ethereum 1.0, similar to Bitcoin, relies on a mechanism called "Proof-of-Work" or PoW, and is similar to mining: Lots of processing power is used to verify transactions on the blockchain and those who do all that verification work — the "miners" — get rewarded with a predetermined amount of crypto. As this process became more energy-consuming and too complicated for individuals to perform — alongside the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that demanded even more verifications — another mechanism appeared: "Proof-of-Stake" or POS. Here, people — or "validators" — commit — or "stake" — their own cryptocurrency in an automated system — often a wallet, where people will simply hold their crypto — which at certain times will randomly pick a person who gets to validate a batch of blockchain transactions. Same as before, validation leads to new cryptocurrency as a reward — essentially acting as interest after initial investment. As the amount of crypto needed can be considerable, there are also so-called "staking pools" where groups of people gather the coins needed for — or "delegate" to — an external validator, and still get the rewards. Cardano and Solana only use proof of stake, whereas the relatively new Ethereum 2.0 is also relying on it.
