Staking Solana helps secure the Solana blockchain and earns additional SOL as a reward.
The Solana staking reward is approximately 6% annual percentage yield ([[APY]]) and staking rewards are paid out approximately every epoch 2 to 3 days. Solana network inflation is approximately 8% per year.
There are four primary methods to stake your Solana - staking SOL through a centralized exchange, delegating your SOL to an existing network validator, "liquid staking" your SOL via a staking pool, or running your own network validator.
Validators that provide staking infrastructure will charge a variable fee on rewards. The rewards after taking the fee into consideration can be calculated as follows
If you delegate 100 SOL to a validator, the reward might be 6.3%:
$
100 \cdot 0.063 = 6.3 SOL
$
The fee might be 7%:
$
6.3 \cdot 0.07 = 0.441SOL
$
Therefore estimated balance after 1 year would be:
$
100 + 6.3 - 0.441 = 105.859 SOL
$
Paid out every epoch would be:
$
\frac{(105.859 - 100)}{\frac{365}{3}} = 0.048 SOL
$
The APY specified is approximate and will change according to network conditions such as inflation and validator commission.