Staking earns yield. But do staking tokens earn anything?
Liquid staking and restaking protocols manage billions in TVL and generate real revenue. But most of that revenue flows to stakers — not token holders. Meanwhile, VC unlock schedules are relentless.
Staking & Restaking at a Glance
Wait — isn't staking supposed to be passive income?
Staking your ETH or SOL earns you yield — typically 3-5% annually. That's real. But there's a crucial difference between earning staking yield and holding a staking protocol token.
Liquid staking protocols (Lido, Rocket Pool, Jito, Marinade) let you stake without locking up your tokens. They take a 5-10% commission on staking rewards. Restaking protocols (EigenLayer, Ether.fi) extend this by letting staked ETH secure additional services.
The trap: most of the revenue from these protocols flows to stakers, not token holders. Lido generates roughly $600-960M in total staking fee throughput — but the LDO token captures only $63M (its 10% commission), and even that doesn't flow to token holders yet. Meanwhile, restaking tokens like EIGEN have massive VC unlock schedules ($92M/yr) that dwarf their tiny revenue.
The best staking investment is often just staking directly. The tokens of staking protocols are a separate — and often worse — bet.
The Scoreboard: Who Actually Makes Money?
The Cost to Earn $1
How much each project spends in inflation to generate $1 in fees
Sector Breakdown: Where's the Real Revenue?
The Hidden Sell Pressure
Some tokens have billions in locked supply that's slowly being released to early investors — who often sell
The Marinade Exception
In a sector dominated by VC-backed protocols with massive unlock schedules, Marinade stands out as an anomaly. The team voluntarily reduced their own allocation from 30% to 7.5%. They burned 300M tokens (30% of supply). They directed 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury. And they activated a 50% revenue buyback-and-burn.
The result: Marinade is the only staking token that is simultaneously profitable, deflationary, and community-owned (92.5% DAO-controlled). At $37M market cap with $4.4M in annual revenue, it trades at a ~8x P/E — cheaper than most "yield-bearing" DeFi tokens.
The catch: it's tiny, illiquid, and 100% dependent on Solana. But from a pure fundamentals perspective, it's what every staking token *should* look like. The question is whether other protocols will follow Marinade's model — or keep enriching insiders.