You may think of staking as a less resource-intensive alternative to mining. It involves holding funds in a cryptocurrency wallet to support the security and operations of a blockchain network. Simply put, staking is the act of locking cryptocurrencies to receive rewards.

Proof of Stake or Staking Program. The main idea is that participants can lock coins (their “stake”), and at particular intervals, the protocol randomly assigns the right to one of them to validate the next block. Typically, the probability of being chosen is proportional to the amount of coins – the more coins locked up, the higher the chances.

As we’ve discussed before, Proof of Work blockchains rely on mining to add new blocks to the blockchain. In contrast, Proof of Stake chains produce and validate new blocks through the process of staking. Staking involves validators who lock up their coins so they can be randomly selected by the protocol at specific intervals to create a block. Usually, participants that stake larger amounts have a higher chance of being chosen as the next block validator.