Ethereum, Solana, HYPE Growth Isn’t Lifting Staking Yields: Bitwise

Ethereum and Solana both hit record staking levels in the third quarter, yet Bitwise’s latest quarterly staking report details that yields on both networks fell.Why More Staked Capital Is Producing Smaller ReturnsBitwise wrote in its Q3 2026 staking report that Ethereum closed the quarter with 43.80 million ETH staked, representing 35.9% of total supply.Annualized yield dropped to 2.63% from 2.81%, since more ETH now competes for the same pool of rewards.Here’s what’s driving Ethereum’s numbers:Bitmine’s (NASDAQ:) stake: climbed from roughly 410,000 tokens in December to 5.07 million by late September, driving much of the overall growth.Yield source: newly issued ETH supplied about 96.3% of the yield, with transaction fees contributing little.Falling fees: average transaction costs dropped from $1.35 to $0.45 over the past year, which Bitwise tied to expanded network capacity.Solana’s staking data showed the same dynamic playing out:Active stake: rose to 440.5 million SOL, or 69% of supply.Gross yield: slipped to 5.99% from 6.38%.Transaction volume: hit a record 14.2 billion, up 45% from the prior quarter.Network fees: climbed to roughly $76 million, with Pump.fun (CRYPTO: PUMP) alone generating $135 million.Tokenized equities: grew 59% to $669 million in circulating value.What’s Happening Beyond the Two Biggest NetworksHyperliquid as measured by Hyperliquid Strategies kept its staking yield largely flat at 2.24%, even as the platform expanded well beyond crypto trading:Fees and reserve income: reached $228.1 million, up 24.8% quarter over quarter.Non-crypto perpetual markets: including equities and indexes, generated $261.5 billion in volume.Concentration risk: TradeXYZ accounted for roughly 98.9% of all market-deployer volume on the platform.What went wrong: a faulty external price feed in its SK Hynix market triggered a wave of liquidations during the quarter.NEAR Protocol held its staking yield near 4.87%, even as activity on its base chain declined, with transactions falling 12.5% quarter over quarter.NEAR Intents, a cross-chain service that routes transactions through competing providers, saw volume jump 66.8% to $10.41 billion over the same period.Meanwhile, Robinhood Chain , which runs on Ethereum and has no independent staking system, posted a strong debut quarter:Transactions processed: 870.2 million.Gross fees generated: $51.11 million.Decentralized exchange volume: $14.05 billion, driven by its 193 Stock Tokens.Daily trading growth: jumped from $17 million in July to $377.1 million by September.Preview Image: Shutterstock