Staking & Mining — Crypto Glossary
Staking and mining are how blockchains pay the people who secure them. Proof-of-work miners trade electricity for hashrate; proof-of-stake validators lock tokens as collateral against bad behavior. These terms cover the rewards, the slashing penalties, the halving cycles that set long-term issuance, and the airdrops projects use to bootstrap early users.
Airdrop An airdrop is a free distribution of tokens, usually to a set of early users of a protocol or blockchain. Delegated Staking Delegated staking lets token holders assign their stake to a validator without running infrastructure themselves. Halving A halving is a scheduled reduction in a proof-of-work blockchain's block reward. Hashrate Hashrate is the rate at which a mining network computes hashes per second. Mining Mining is the process of competing to produce the next block on a proof-of-work blockchain by solving computational puzzles. Mining Pool A mining pool is a cooperative of miners who combine hashrate and share block rewards proportional to contribution. Slashing Slashing is the penalty mechanism in proof-of-stake consensus: a validator that misbehaves — double-signs, violates surround-voting rules, or otherwise prova… Staking Staking is the act of locking tokens as collateral to participate in a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism or to earn protocol rewards.